Geeking Out with Adriana Villela

The One Where We Geek Out on Vibe Coding with Jean-Mark Wright

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Adriana Villela, Diana Todea) — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 04:00:00 +0000

Key takeaways:

Kids take new tech for granted. For example, carriers used to charge by the minute for calls. Text and web browsing were extra (and extra expensive).
Configuring Linux back in the day was 1 part fun, 10 parts pain.
Watching things on video allows us to see expressions and hear intonations that you would otherwise miss with text. With text, you would have to imagine that for yourself.
Being able to take a problem and break it down into first principles allows you to look at a problem from different angle, pulling on your experience and the experiences of others to solve those components and put the layers back on to form a solution.
Many of today's paradigms are just variants of problems that we've seen before, just masquerading with different names.
If we break down a problem enough, we actually start to see examples of how similar problems have been solved.
Breaking down a problem into a way that someone outside of your area of work can understand teaches you to break a problem down into understandable bits and helps you understand the problem better.
It's easy to think you understand something. But as soon as you try to try to explain that to someone else, it forces you to dig deeper.
Understanding things from first principles gives us a better understanding of how things work.
WIth vibe coding, junior engineers don't get to experience more traditional debugging (i.e. with Google). Is that good or bad?
Problem solving loop: come up with a hypothesis, test it out, and if the test fails, come up with another hypothesis, and keep repeating that loop until the problem is solved. Juniors these days aren't necessarily exposed to that.
Debugging with LLMs shortens feedback loops.
Junior engineers, not having been through the "old way" of debugging with Google and StackOverflow may be tempted to view LLMs as an authority.
Maybe it makes sense to just give into All The AI things and retrain ourselves to coexist with AI.
Encode best practices in LLM rules files to help guide junior developers
Style guides can be enforced through instructions files
Mentoring + style guides + other guardrails can help junior engineers level up
Pre-AI-era engineers and AI-native engineers can learn a lot from each other

About our guest:

Jean-Mark is a builder at heart, driven by a passion for creating sustainable architecture, fostering strong teams, and championing Observability.

He has dedicated his career to building across various disciplines with a keen focus on creating systems that are both fit for purpose and built to last. Jean-Mark’s journey into Observability began from a practical challenge: the difficulty of understanding complex production systems at scale. This sparked a deep passion for designing and implementing solutions that provide clarity and insight into these systems.

A natural leader, Jean-Mark is as invested in people as he is in technology. He has brought many others along on his journey, mentoring and training colleagues in best practices and making countless tooling improvements to enhance system visibility across the organization. This commitment to both technical excellence and people development has made a lasting impact. At his core, Jean-Mark is still a builder who finds great joy in investing in people and engaging in endless conversations about all things Observability.

Find Jean-Mark on:

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bio.site/geekingout
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Links:

Geeking Out Live: The One Where We Give a Sh*t About IWD with Colleen Coll, Reese Lee, Imma Valls, and Josh Lee

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 04:00:00 +0000

Key Takeaways

With many companies scaling back DEI programs, conversations about gender equity are more important than ever.
Seeing women in technical and leadership roles encourages others to enter and stay in the field.
Men and women alike should use their privilege to advocate for and uplift women
There's a difference between supportive and performative males. Performative males want to be "seen" doing the right things, but aren't actually supporting women in the workplace.
Men who use their privilege to support women should not be put on a pedestal; that should be the bare minimum and something that should be done by default
Don't wait until you're "ready" (we never feel fully ready). There's always someone less qualified than you who will apply for jobs/pursue speaking opportunities/scholarships/etc., so why not take a chance and put yourself out there?
Don't be afraid to reach out to women to mentor/guide them; sometimes they may be too shy/scared to reach out

Chapters

00:08 Intro

00:29 Guest intros

06:24 Why is IWD important?

11:20 Name one woman who inspires you

22:24 What can women do to support other women in the workplace?

31:43 Name one man who inspires you

42:55 What can men do to support other men in the workplace

51:48 What are some workplace inequalities that need to be fixed

58:22 What advice do you have for women entering tech?

About our guests

Colleen Coll

"Allow myself to introduce...myself." - Austin Powers

Ever feel like you're juggling flaming torches planning events—trying to keep all the details in the air while something’s always about to catch fire? Yep, she's been there. Events have a way of throwing curveballs, and when tech and tools aren’t playing nice, chaos can easily take over.

That’s where Colleen Coll comes in. She love turning event madness into magic. Whether it’s on-site event coverage using digital media, live reporting, or behind-the-scenes management, she makes sure everything runs like clockwork. She's also a huge fan of using There.App, which simplifies on-location event management by keeping everyone in sync and streamlining the entire process, so no detail gets lost in the shuffle.

From tech conferences to startup launches, I capture the moments that matter and keep things smooth, whether it's happening live or behind the scenes. And when she's not on the ground, she's writing—blogs, articles, and ghostwriting for tech leaders to tell the bigger story behind the event, brand, or mission.

Find Colleen on:

Reese Lee

Reese Lee (she/her) is a Senior Developer Relations Engineer at New Relic, where she enables users on open source technologies such as OpenTelemetry. She has spoken on various topics related to OpenTelemetry, and maintains and creates community resources aimed at OTel end users. She is super into anything paranormal, and enjoys sci-fi and traveling.

Find Reese on:

Imma Valls

Imma is a Developer Advocate at Grafana Labs. She loves simplifying and sharing knowledge on Observability, OpenTelemetry, and Cloud Native accessible. Her mission is to create high-value technical content while driving the adoption of best practices within the community. As a community organizer and ally, she's passionate about building inclusive communities and events where underrepresented people in tech can confidently share their stories and knowledge. Knowledge isn't static; it's an asset that multiplies when shared.

Find Imma on:

Josh Lee

Josh is a Developer Advocate at Altinity, where he applies his observability and engineering background to ClickHouse use cases. He has over 15 years of experience in developing and leading software projects for various clients and industries. Josh is also a speaker and a contributor to the OpenTelemetry and CNCF communities, sharing his insights and best practices on topics such as distributed tracing. He is always eager to learn new things and explore new challenges, and he strives to create elegant and innovative solutions that take into account the nuances and correlations of complex problems.

Find Josh on:

Find Geeking Out on

All of our social channels are on bio.site/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bio.site/adrianavillela

Show Notes

A Special Programming Note

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Adriana Villela, Diana Todea) — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 05:00:00 +0000

The One Where We Geek Out on the Plan from Which to Deviate with Diana Todea

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Adriana Villela, Diana Todea) — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 05:00:00 +0000

Key takeaways:

Diana took the "failure" of being downgraded in her PhD program as a wakeup call.
Although being downgraded in her PhD program was a shock for Diana and made her extremely angry, she found the strength to finish her studies, and reinvented herself through a career in tech.
Learning from failure is an important part of personal growth.
Don't spend your time ruminating on the negative from years ago, because there are other, more important things that come up in life that we have to deal with.
Find humility in your failure and move on.
Diana's early experience in tech working at a call centre, and then in customer support prepared her for a later role as an SRE.
Diana's call centre work taught her how to: Push past her introversion and phone anxiety; Manage her emotions; Filter; Have empathy; Listen
Diana's work doing tech support in AWS, Azure, etc, introduced her into the cloud native space, and naturally primed her for a role as an SRE, and eventually as a developer advocate in the Observability space.
Working in tech support meant being on-call, which prepared Diana for on-call work of SRE
As a working mom in tech, it's hard to fully excel at work and at family life. It's a balancing act, and you do your best to manage.
Nobody gives you an award for being a mom. You just do it.
Updating docs, either to clarify a concept or to provide translation into another language is a great way to start contributing to cloud native projects.
Having translation of OTel docs in different languages makes it accessible to those who aren't fluent in English.

About our guest:

Diana is a Developer Experience Engineer at VictoriaMetrics. She has worked as a Senior Site Reliability Engineer focused on Observability. She is an active member of the OpenTelemetry CNCF open source project, co-organizer of Cloud Native Days Romania, co-lead of neurodiversity working group (part of CNCF initiative merge-forward) and supports underrepresented groups in tech.

Find Diana on:

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bio.site/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bio.site/adrianavillela

Links:

The One Where We Geek Out on Geeking Out with Scott Hanselman

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Adriana Villela, Scott Hanselman) — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 05:00:00 +0000

Key takeaways:

Language models without context are meaningless.
How Scott's son went on a smartphone detox by getting an Alcatel flip phone where he could swap SIM cards back and forth from his iPhone to his flip phone.
Given enough experience with enough similar programming languages, you're able to transfer skills from one language to another, and even understand/write enough code in an unfamiliar language to be dangerous. 😜
The line of dev and ops has been blurred.
You should containerize an app once or twice so that you know what ops is doing. It makes you a true "full stack" developer, giving you an appreciation for various aspects of the SDLC, and it also gives you empathy for what folks in ops are doing. The same applies to testing.
The amount of preparation for delivering a TED talk is a vastly different experience than preparing to deliver a talk at a conference.
Most schools don't teach computer history and it's important to understand where the technology that we use comes from.

About our guest:

Scott Hanselman is a programmer, teacher, and speaker. He works out of his home office in Portland, Oregon for Microsoft as the Vice President of Developer Community. He works on .NET, Open Source, and the Azure Cloud Developer Experience. He blogs about technology, culture, gadgets, inclusion, code, the web, where we're going and where we've been. He's excited about community, social equity, media, entrepreneurship and above all, the open web.

He has a number of fun podcasts and a YouTube channel.

Find our guest on:

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bio.site/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bio.site/adrianavillela

Links:

Geeking Out Live: Working Moms in Tech Panel with Rizel Scarlett, Autumn Nash, Cortney Nickerson, and Diana Todea

Tue, 13 Jan 2026 05:00:00 +0000

Key Takeaways

We all experienced pregnancy differently, and it's okay to not love being pregnant while being in awe of the human being created inside of you
Take some time off before you have your baby, because it just gets busy after that
Maternity leave varies from country. In Canada, you get 12-18 months. In Spain, you get 4 months, and in the US, you get 6 weeks. If you're lucky, you work at a company with good maternity leave benefits.
Many of the mamas in this panel hustled HARD not only during pregnancy, but post-partum
Sleep deprivation as a new mom is REAL, and is a testament to the strength and resilience of being a mom
We're not all lucky enough to have family and/or daycares(affordable or not) near us to help us raise our children
Rizel chose to worked part-time post-partum to stay sharp, yet she still balanced being present for her daughter during her time off
Cortney took her first child to work with her, to balance working and childcare
Being a role model to your children and teaching them to be self-sufficient is important
Encouraging boys and girls to hang out together from an early age, rather than separating them, helps break down gender stereotypes and barriers
For boy moms: it's important to a great role model as a mom of little boys, to teach them to be respectful of women as they grow older

About our guests

Rizel Scarlett

Rizel Scarlett is a Staff Developer Advocate at TBD, Block's newest business unit. With a diverse background spanning GitHub, startups, and non-profit organizations, Rizèl has cultivated a passion for utilizing emerging technologies to champion equity within the tech industry. She moonlights as an Advisor at G{Code} House, an organization aimed at teaching women of color and non-binary people of color to code. Rizèl believes in leveraging vulnerability, honesty, and kindness as means to educate early-career developers.

Find our Rizel on:

Autumn Nash

Autumn Nash is a Product Manager at Microsoft specializing in Linux Security previously over four years at Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a Software Development Engineer, I currently contribute to the Language and Runtimes team, specializing in the development and release of Amazon Corretto (Java) while actively engaging in the OpenJDK community. Prior to this, Autumn's role as a NoSQL Solutions Architect involved guiding organizations in selecting purpose-built NoSQL databases, utilizing Python and Java to unblock customers and contribute to educational content. In addition to her technical expertise in solutions engineering, back-end web development, and cloud computing, Autumn is proud to be a mom, bringing a unique perspective to the tech industry. She is also an alumni member of Rewriting the Code, further enriching her commitment to effective communication and education. Serving as the Board Chair of Education at MilSpouse Coders and as a Chapter Leader for the Greater Seattle Area, her advocacy for collaborative learning and community development extends beyond technology.

Find Autumn on:

Cortney Nickerson

Cortney is Head of Community at Nirmata. As a CNCF and Civo Ambassador, she helps co-organize the CNCF Bilbao Community, various Kubernetes Community Day events, and KubeJam. Additionally, she is a recognized voice in the cloud native space. Initially, a non-techie, she turned techie as employee 7 at a startup acquired by DataDog while writing content for the Data on Kubernetes Community. When not talking tech, you can find her talking DEl, sharing about her struggle with imposter syndrome, and trying to wrestle her kids to bed at a normal time.

Find Cortney on:

Diana Todea

Find Diana on:

Find Geeking Out on

All of our social channels are on bio.site/geekingout
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Show Notes

The One Where We Geek Out on Saying, "I don't know" with Cortney Nickerson

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Cortney Nickerson, Adriana Villela) — Tue, 2 Dec 2025 05:00:00 +0000

Key takeaways:

Humans are delightfully malleable! As a right-handed person being taught sports by a left-handed person, Cortney learned to play many sports left-handed!
Devs who shifted into the ops space have a unique perspective because they have done it all - not just the dev work, but also the ops work.
QAs bridge the gap for Dev and Ops, because they have had to make everybody communicate with each other and they feel everybody's pain.
Admitting that you don't have all the answers and asking for help is a superpower, as it "liberates" others around you to ask questions.
Being unafraid to ask questions and ask for clarifications is how Cortney was able to level up in tech, in spite of not having a technical background.
People are willing to help you if you're willing to put in the effort and if you show them that you've been trying.
The fact that tech constantly changes means that we have new opportunities to learn and gain expertise in new areas.
When we're in the midst of feeling like we're not doing enough, sometimes we need others to remind us that yes, we ARE.
We tend to be incredibly hard on ourselves. There are other people who see the effort that we make, and they appreciate what it is that we get done.
Tech moves so quickly that whether you take a break for 6 weeks or 1 year, by the time you get back, things have changed.
When you're raising a child and working, having a partner, spouse, or someone else you can lean on for support makes a huge difference. Support can be physical or emotional.
We need to have conversations to normalize support for working moms.
Once we have kids, people ask how our kids are doing, but now how we're doing. And yet, our kids' wellbeing depends on our wellbeing.
Context is queen. We assume that people hold it together because they're just that good, but it reality, we don't realize that they have a whole village of people helping them out.

About our guest:

Find our guest on:

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show notes:

Transcript:
ADRIANA:
Hey everyone, welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast, in which we dive into the career journeys of some of the amazing humans in tech and geek out on topics like software development, DevOps, observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada.

ADRIANA:
And geeking out with me today, I have Cortney Nickerson. Welcome, Cortney.

CORTNEY:
I thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

ADRIANA:
I'm excited to have you. It. You know, when when I was looking at guests to bring on for the next season, I'm like, how have I not had Courtney on yet?

CORTNEY:
Yes. Actually, I think you said to me you should be on my podcast. Again. That was what you said to me. We where were we? We were... we were at Rejekts. I think at the last KubeCon.

ADRIANA:
Oh yeah, Rejekts, that’s right.

CORTNEY:
You should be on my podcast again. And I was like, I haven't been on it. And you're like, wait, what? Wait. How's this possible? And I was like, I don't know. But I've seen like every episode. I've, I feel like I've been on it, but I haven’t been.

ADRIANA:
And finally we made it happen. Yay!

CORTNEY:
Yes we did.

ADRIANA:
So. And where are you calling from today?

CORTNEY:
Today I'm calling from Farmington, New Mexico. I spend most of my life in, in Spain, just outside of San Sebastian, in the Basque Country. But I am home visiting my, my parents in, in New Mexico today, so. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
We'll we're going to start with, lightning round questions or. Icebreaker, or, whatever. I, I used to call them lightning round, but sometimes they're fast, sometimes they're not. So... icbreaker.

CORTNEY:
Yeah. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
Well, let the wind blow as it may.

CORTNEY:
At your own pace questions.

ADRIANA:
Yes, at your own pace questions. I like that okay. First question. Are you left handed or right handed?

CORTNEY:
Oh. Good question. Writing right handed. But batting in in softball. Left handed.

ADRIANA:
No way. That's so cool.

CORTNEY:
Yeah, yeah.

ADRIANA:
Does it throw people off? Like when you're batting left handed because, I mean, there's so few, few left handed batters.

CORTNEY:
Yeah. Actually, my my dad coached me in sports my whole life, and he's left handed. And so he used to stand in front of me to do things. I stand behind him and mimic what he was doing. And so in almost all of my sports I’m better left-handed. So basketball as well, I spent more time dribbling with my left hand, because I was mimicking my dad. Layups from left hand side, like shoot, jump shot left handed. Batting softball left handed because I was mimicking my dad. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
That is so cool. Do you catch also like, like, I guess if you're left handed, catch with your right. So I bat left handed, but I pitched right handed. So catch with my left. Yeah.

CORTNEY:
But that was also because the first person who started teaching how to pitch, my dad was the catcher, and he didn't know anything about pitching, so he had somebody, work with me the first time. And they were right handed.

ADRIANA:
Ah!

CORTNEY:
So I'm one of those people that's like. Oh, well, that person does it this way, so I guess I do too. So depending on what you're showing me how to do, I might do it right handed or I do it left.

ADRIANA:
That's awesome. I it reminds me like, because I'm left handed, but I mouse right handed, and I couldn’t even fathom mousing, mousing left handed. My mom was left handed, But my dad is the computer guy, and he's the one who showed me a mouse for the first time, and he is right handed. So I think I just...

CORTNEY:
See? Same thing!

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

CORTNEY:
Very cool.

ADRIANA:
It's so cool. I also find, like, you know, you mentioned them showing sports. Like you were shown left handed way. So you gravitated towards that. I remember at one point I took squash lessons and, and this was as an adult, and I had attempted racket sports. And so I use my left hand dominant. So it always throws people off whenever, like they try to show me sports stuff and they're and they're right-handed. Yeah. And then I'm the lefty. I'm like, can you show that for left handed people? And it always throws people off.

CORTNEY:
Yeah. Yeah for sure.

ADRIANA:
So yeah. Yeah. Love it. Okay. Next question. Do you prefer iPhone or Android?

CORTNEY:
Android 100%. I use a Mac for work, but Android for phone. Absolutely.

ADRIANA:
Okay, that falls into my next question. Do you prefer Mac, Linux, or Windows?

CORTNEY:
I'm. I'm a MacBook user. But I think probably because I came from a non-technical background. And so it was like, oh, Mac. Mac is great for design and it's great for a bunch of other other things. And then I just kind of stuck with it.

ADRIANA:
That's great. Okay. Next question. Do you have a favorite programing language?

CORTNEY:
I love this question. Because the first time I was asked if I knew any programing language, my answer is, I know HTML. Because that was all I knew. Now that time has gone by, I've learned some other programing languages, but to this day, my my favorite language is always going to be HTML, because I did not realize how stupid I sounded when I answered that way. But also, it's like I I'm aging myself, but I had MySpace and that's why I know HTML. So like, it was my first language, and I'm proud of it.

ADRIANA:
That's great. That's great. My, my. First dabbling into HTML. I went I went wild, like, do you remember the blink tag in HTML? Yeah, I, I used that with reckless abandon. And, and I, like, threw a bunch of animated GIFs on the website.

CORTNEY:
Of course. Of course.

ADRIANA:
it was, it was the. Tackiest most useless like, but so glorious in so many ways.

CORTNEY:
Under underneath it all. Like, HTML isn't really a coding language, but I still love it.

ADRIANA:
It holds a special place in my heart. I, I dabbled in HTML back in the day. I found it... when it was paired with CSS, things looked pretty, but I hated the fact that it never looked the same in every browser. And then I just got really mad and frustrated. I'm like, yeah. Buh bye. I'm doing backend.

CORTNEY:
I only had access to the internet of the public library. It was like one dial-up modem we had like basically 30 minutes, because there is such a long line of people who wanted to get on, but like, I don't I don't even think I had time to recognize what they're like, the same anywhere else. It was just like, oh, cool, I've got a.

ADRIANA:
And back in the time of dial up modems, I don't even think we had like that many options with web browsers.

CORTNEY:
Yeah. No, there wasn't a lot. There was.

ADRIANA:
You remember...

CORTNEY:
Yeah.

ADRIANA:
the flashing “N”?

CORTNEY:
Yeah. And Yahoo

ADRIANA:
Ask Jeeves?

CORTNEY:
Oh I was just talking about Jeeves the other day. I was like, whatever happened to Ask Jeeves? We were just having that conversation the other day. I was like, know everybody, just ask Google or ChatGPT. But didn't anybody hear of Ask Jeeves? And half of the meeting was like, oh yeah, and the other half as a way too young. Way too young to be asking Jeeves anything. And I was like, okay.

ADRIANA:
That is so funny. I just remember, like, Ask Jeeves was the go to. And then all of a sudden, people started using Google, and I can't remember, like, in my brain when, you know, I switched to using Google. Like...

CORTNEY:
Yeah, me neither. Yeah, it did just happened. But Jeeves is like. And he was so cute. Like, their little logo guy was.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

CORTNEY:
Just... like a little butler.

ADRIANA:
That's right!

CORTNEY:
Take care of all your stuff.

ADRIANA:
Brings back memories. That and... that and the dial up noise.

CORTNEY:
Yeah.

ADRIANA:
I used to have that as a ringtone for when my dad called.

CORTNEY:
Oh.

ADRIANA:
But now my phone is always on silent, so I don't really get to enjoy my ringtones.

CORTNEY:
Yeah, my phone's always on silent also. We should bring ringtones back. At least the dial up. The dial up.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

CORTNEY:
(...) ringtone. The rest of them maybe not, but that one's like a nice, nice nostalgia to it.

ADRIANA:
It is is is. It probably like, hurts the ears of the young ones when they hear it and they're like, what is that noise?

CORTNEY:
What is that? Yeah. What is that? So okay. Next question. Do you prefer Dev or Ops?

CORTNEY:
Ops. For sure. Yeah. I think I've got a lot of reasons for it. But yeah. Ops.

ADRIANA:
Oh, do share, if you're up for it.

CORTNEY:
Yeah, well. My first job in tech was actually doing cold calls to people about a DevSecOps tool. And so I spent a lot of time talking to devs specifically because the whole concept was a “shift left” security concept. And the number of times I just heard over and over, because everybody wants developers to do everything, right. And it was like a ehhhgh, and if I talked to somebody from the Ops space, most of the time, they were trying to push it off onto the security team. They were never trying to push it off on devs. They were always trying to push it off on the security team. But almost like they had this whole, oh, I already push a bunch of stuff off on devs, and I don't want to have to, like, get yelled at by them again. And I don't want to talk to them. And so it's just better like, security team, you need to talk to security team.

ADRIANA:
Oh.

CORTNEY:
And I was like, okay, but, specifically it was that it was I was constantly hearing Devs be like, oh, everything. Everything. Shift left shift left shift left. I do agree with them that so many things are shift left, but also it just happens to be the the where they're situated in the pipeline. Right. It's like, well, things need to get started in one specific way. And like, you're, you're the starting point. And so the I personally adore devs who have moved into the Ops space and, and being in the cloud native space, there's so many of them. Like, I used to be a dev and then I got. Some of them got stuck having to figure out how to package their own things. Other people just kind of took more of an interest into this whole space. And I, I just find those particular people that have moved into ops from dev, to be incredibly knowledgeable because they've done it all now. And and so friendly and so helpful and oftentimes most active in community spaces.

But also, if I had another option, I would inevitably pick the QA people. QA folks bridge the gap for everybody. I always and like they should be the platform team because, they have had to make everybody communicate with each other and they feel everybody's pain. They're like innately empathetic, and they're stuck in the middle all the time. Yeah. And, and they try to be helpful. And they never think that they know the answer, even though a lot of times they do, and they dabble in, in everything a little bit, but don't want to step on anybody's toes. And they really listen and, and so if I, if I had a third option, I would the QA. I think QA folks are highly underrated.

ADRIANA:
I love that that's such a great take! Yeah. I mean, I started my, career after university, doing QA.

CORTNEY:
Oh, see?

ADRIANA:
Yeah, and it was, you know, like, that's what was available at the company I joined. And it gave me it gave me some really good perspective. I had wanted to go straight into dev, but they got me into QA, and, I learned some things along the way. I have to say, I learned patience.

CORTNEY:
Yeah.

ADRIANA:
That was one thing. Yeah. Yeah, there is, there. I feel like QAs carry a lot.

CORTNEY:
Yes.

ADRIANA:
A burden of sorts, right? Because, like, they're the ones being pressured at the end of the day, like, pass the test. Pass the test. Pass the.... It's like, no, no, no, it's not working.

CORTNEY:
Exactly.

ADRIANA:
What are you talking about?

CORTNEY:
No, um, pressure is a privilege, no matter where you are in life, I think. But also they carry out a lot of silent, silent weight, from everyone around them. And, and often times they are the doing the glue work, that works together and makes things possible for both sides. So they're, they're, they're actually my, my favorite.

ADRIANA:
Yay. Thanks for sharing that perspective. Okay. Next question. Do you prefer JSON or YAML?

CORTNEY:
YAML. Definitely YAML. Also, I, I was DevRel for a project called Monokle for a bit, and, and created the slogan, “We love YAML so you don't have to.”

ADRIANA:
That's so clever. I love that.

CORTNEY:
So by default it's it's got to be YAML because that was my slogan. I made stickers and everything. I was like, we love YAML so you don't have to. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
Aw, that's great. Okay. Next one. Do you prefer spaces or tabs?

CORTNEY:
Tabs. Yeah. Tabs. But this is also PTSD from loads of years working in word docs, where spaces never come out the same, as everybody's space in their own machine. And then all of a sudden you use it and some like if somebody is using Windows and they send you that same word doc, but you're in a Mac, and all of a sudden everything's out of out of whack. And tabs just stay the same. So this is.

ADRIANA:
I'm there for consistency. I love consistency. Yeah. Yeah. It's frustrating when you, when you get, like, the different the different formatting based on the, based on the OS that you're running. It's like. Aggravating to say the least.

CORTNEY:
So aggravating, so aggravating. Or when you have something in a format that works and then you send it to somebody and they open it in like a Google drive, and all of a sudden you're like, what happened. That's not the font. That's not this. That's a space. Ugh. It’s aggravating.

ADRIANA:
Kay... two more questions. Do you prefer to consume content through video or text?

CORTNEY:
I'm. I'm a text person, actually, I do, I do watch a lot of videos, but inevitably I will turn on the video and also read the transcript.

ADRIANA:
Oh, yeah. Yeah.

CORTNEY:
That's that's me. And so sometimes I'll get engrossed in the transcript that I, I totally stop watching the video.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. I, I, I much rather like transcript closed captioning like I love captions. Like if I forget to turn on the captions or like, someone at home forgets to turn on captions while we're watching TV, I'm like.

ADRIANA:
Turn on the captions.

CORTNEY:
Yeah.

ADRIANA:
And all three of us at home are, like, addicted to having the captions on when we watch TV.

CORTNEY:
Absolutely. Yeah. I'm. I'm that person. I, I prefer, I prefer text, so I, I guess this is also aging me. I'm sure I'm. Five years younger or. Or less be like. Oh, no. Video. Are you kidding me? Who reads?

ADRIANA:
I do wonder. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because my my daughter like, hates reading and I'm like, oh whatever, I don't care. Because like, the, the amount of cool shit she learns on YouTube is, incredible. Like she was just telling me all all this, like, stuff, like she follows, like, astronomers and cosmologists and like, she's learning about dinosaurs. I'm like, okay, I, I don't care that you don't read books because you're learning cool shit on YouTube.

CORTNEY:
Yeah, there's tons of stuff out there. But I am the person who's like, oh, that video looks cool. And then I'll open the transcript. And totally stop seeing. Anything that's going on in the video. And just like be engrossed in the transcript. But I think part of it is just I learn better that way if I, if I hear it, okay. But if I read it, it sticks with me longer.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. It’s like the visual that visual aspect of the words on the page. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm, I'm the same way. I, I find videos too distracting. I'm too ADHD for it. I start watching a video and then they'll say something and my mind wanders, and then I'm like. Shit. What did they say again? And then I'm finding myself rewinding.

CORTNEY:
I do that as well. I do that as well. Whereas if I'm reading it, then I, my mind goes off and then I come back to...

ADRIANA:
Yes, yeah, yeah. It’s easier to come back to it.

CORTNEY:
Yeah. Yeah

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Exactly. I... same same. Yes.

CORTNEY:
Also. This attributes to the massive number of just excessive browser tabs I have open. Or when I force myself to stop like once every six weeks and go look at them and like, what was I on this page for? Like, why in the world did I go on this rabbit hole of a tangent? And I have like four browsers in a row that, like, clearly are all there because I went from one to the next to the next down some rabbit hole.

CORTNEY:
But I can't fathom why I was there. It's like it's been six weeks since they opened this, and it was really important to me at that time. I can't remember why now. It's just it's astounding that I do that, but I learn more, I guess, reading and than watching.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, I feel you and I can very much relate on the browser tabs. Like even when I start with like a fresh slate. Fresh browser, I'm like, okay, I'm going to be good. And the next thing I know I've got like 20 tabs open in the span of ten minutes. I'm like, what happened?

CORTNEY:
How does this happen. No. And and I had a whole bunch of browsers, like I go through these very odd anxiety where it's like, I know I need to close these tabs. I know they're pointless, and I know I haven't looked at them for weeks, but if I accidentally close the whole thing, it's just like overwhelming anxiety. Oh my God, I need to get it back. And then I have to stop myself and be like, Cortney, just let it go. You don't need to... like, you don't need to do the command to bring it back up. Like there's no reason for this. It's slowing everything down. But it will sit with me and then I won't restart my computer for a while because I'm like, just in case. Just in case it comes to me what was in a browser tab that I needed. It's a weird anxiety that I don't know why I have it, because I have yet to, like, not be able to find something again. But but but it's still there.

ADRIANA:
There's something comforting about keeping it. I also like, my computer even it screams at me like my work computer's like, you haven't rebooted in ten days. I'm like, mmm hmmm. I'm like, but all the stuff I have here is so important. And then it starts to slow down. I'm like, okay. Just start my computer again.

CORTNEY:
No, I do the inevitable do you want to reopen all of these tabs. Yes I do.

ADRIANA:
Oh yeah.

CORTNEY:
But also there should be like a checkmark on that dialog box. It's like ALWAYS. Don't ask again. It's always going to be yes. So stop asking me.

ADRIANA:
Okay. Final question. What is your superpower?

CORTNEY:
Probably being willing to just say, “I have no idea” about stuff all the time. And ask for help. I, I don't think I saw it as being a superpower. I used to think that it was like me just being inevitably dumb. And now I've realized it's actually empowering for me because it's allowed me to adapt and change the thing in my life over and over. And be reborn, professionally and personally. Because I'm willing to say that, I don't know, but also it's liberating for for the other people who are around me. So they can say they don't know too. So that's that's probably it. Just being so blatant about I have no idea what you're talking to me about. Can can you explain it to me like I'm your grandma or your mom? Because I probably could be.

ADRIANA:
Honestly, like, I used to be so intimidated in meetings to say, like, I don't know, but now I'm just like, just for my benefit. Can you explain what that means? And as you said it, it gives other people permission to like, oh, thank God I didn't get that either. There's probably like a room full of people. Who have no idea what the fuck's going on. You just said you just ask the the question. Please explain to me. It's great. It's liberating. I think this is a good segue into, you know, our, our main, conversation. I always love to hear about, like, the journeys of, of my various guests, like how they got into tech. Sounds like you've had an interesting tech journey. I'd love to hear about it.

CORTNEY:
Yeah, yeah. I, I actually didn't realize how strange it was, or is until recently. I gave a talk at KubeCon in Hong Kong. And my my very dear friend Amit DSouza, like the day before the CFP closed for Hong Kong and Japan, is like, let's submit, something. We’re just, kind of. It was like, oh, okay, yeah, I should I, I'm doing DevRel. Like, I should, why haven't I done this yet? And we were just kind of having this snarky back and forth conversation about things and we submitted a talk, about Crossplane. It was like, Crossplane is the answer. What's the question? And the whole thing came up just kind of like a snarky conversation about what people around us are talking about. And we made up a talk submission, and it was supposed to be a workshop, and we submitted it, and then it got accepted. And after it got accepted, it was like a week and a half later, because when she sends you acceptance emails, it's like the same subject line, right? Congratulations. You've been accepted. And it's a big letters and that's it. And so I read this subject line and I screenshot and I sent it to him and we were like, oh yay. We’re going to Hong Kong. Yay! And it was just kind of like, oh. And then like a week later, I get a message from my friend Atul, who was like, congratulations, this is amazing. And I was like, oh yeah, I got accepted. Yeah. The schedule's out. Yeah, it's accepted. And he was... And then I thought to myself, I should start looking at flights. So I open up the email to like, look for more information. And it says keynote in the first paragraph. But it’s so far, down, that you don't actually see it on your phone, right. And you don't see it in the subject line. And it was like, wait, what?

ADRIANA:
That is amazing.

CORTNEY:
It was. Yeah. It was really amazing. It took weeks for it to sink in. It was it was terribly, overwhelming, to be honest. And my friend Amit was like we both, neither one of us had noticed, it was just like, oh, woohoo! And then when we realized it was, it was daunting to me.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

CORTNEY:
It went very well. We had a lot of fun preparing it. It we were we submitted a workshop and ended up having to cut that down to 10 to 12 minutes. Which is... As an exercise I had never done before. Like, we've got 90 minutes of content that has to be put into 12 minutes.. That, that. That. I've done the exercise of, okay, we've got 15 minutes of content. Let's turn it into 30, never the other way around. So that was daunting, in of itself. But after we gave the talk, it took me weeks to actually post anything about it. And a huge part of that was just, in, in the hands small handful of years that I've been in tech, it's just been so fast and so extreme, and so much that I hadn't actually stopped to reflect on it. Yeah. At all. Because my first job in tech was, doing cold calls on the telephone for a Spanish startup. That was a startup. It was a web application security tool. It happened to be an agent that deployed everywhere. Now, in retrospect, I'm like, wow, I know a lot of stuff about agents and a lot of like and for the whole AI world and MCP world and understanding the difference between like this has served me incredibly well. But all of that came from making cold calls on the phone for a company that just needed an English speaker who could also speak to them in Spanish. And I happened to be an American living in the same town that they were in. And being curious. Right. So I'd get somebody on the phone and they'd finally not hang up on me and finally give me some sort of conversation. And then they'd say something that made no sense, and I’d go back to team, be like, okay, so they said this. I don't know what else to ask. That team was so incredibly generous. It was my first experience with techies, as well. The anything I asked if I asked them to teach it to me, they did. Anything. And everything. We ended up getting acquired by Datadog, which was also, I didn't know at the time that that is what everybody aspires to have happen in a tech startup is to then get acquired by some IPOed company. Because I had no experience with tech prior to that job. All of my life experience had been in totally different things.

ADRIANA:
What was your original education background?

CORTNEY:
Yeah, I studied philosophy, international relations, and world religion.

ADRIANA:
No way!

CORTNEY:
So I have three degrees. But, yeah, that that's what I studied. Had nothing to do with tech at all. I grew up in New Mexico. Ten minutes from my parents’ house, where I am right now, there isn't really even cell phone service. Once you get out on the Navajo reservation, there's just there's not a lot of of service. It’s gotten better. But, a lot of times, we’d drive across the reservation to go visit my grandparents in Utah. And, and yeah, you have to wait for the satellite to go over. If you, if you need to make a call. There's nothing. So it wasn't like I grew up in a place that had a lot of access to technology, either. Dial up internet was oftentimes at the library. That's where you could get it. And that was about it. And so I just didn't have access to it. And when I went to college, I didn't go with my own computer. I was using the ones that, in the study hall because I was an athlete. And so we had access to computers there. I remember they had Ethernet, and I had only ever seen and been around dial up, and it was like, whoa! What is that? But my, my experience with that also was very limited. It was like, I would use the computer when I needed to actually type a paper, and do schoolwork on it. Otherwise, all of research was Dewey Decimal System in the library, because that's what I knew. And that's what worked for me. And and I didn't have access to anything else. And nobody introduces you to it. It was just uh, people who knew were in the know. But they don't realize that not everybody else is in the know. And so and then I moved to Europe and again, no, no real access to it other than for emails and, and work, stuff.

So when I did my interview for this job, I had just had my son, and I was I had found a job that I really liked, but I had just had my son and I couldn't travel anywhere near as much with the newborn as what I had been doing. And I remember they asked me, how technical are you? And my answer sounds ridiculous now, but at the time I was being very sincere. It was like, well, if the electricity goes off of my house, I can probably like restart and like configure my printer on the second try, but I can google anything, right? Like I can figure it out. And turns out that was that was the answer that got me the job, because they were all devs who would Google, when they don't know what was going on, to find an answer. And and that was the right answer. And they were like, okay. You speak Spanish, speak English, and you can Google anything. We’ll hire you. Because they were in dire straits, obviously. But it was it was a massive change. Prior to that, I spent ten years running, international summer camps and language immersion summer camps with kids. We started off with 50 students and scaled out to, like, I don't know, 5000 kids and in six weeks doing abroad programs and summer camps and and half day programs and and random things. Nothing technical.

I worked for some marketing firms that were doing marketing for, for big, like big retail providers like Macy's or Mark and Spencer's or, Samsung. Just like, big retail and, and doing marketing campaigns for them. I was, the softball coach for the Spanish national team for a bit as well. So I had done nothing that was technically inclined, to the, to the world that I'm in now. And so after giving that talk in Hong Kong, it was just this moment of pause where it was like, do I actually belong? It all happened so fast. And and truly had to take a couple of weeks to just sit with myself and the insane imposter syndrome that happened of, “How am I even here?” And, How did this happen so fast? Do... all of the amazing people around me have helped me so much and explained so many things and are still so patient with me because I still don't. There's just so many gaps. I still just don't know. And it was very much this thought of, do I actually deserve to be there, and, and truly had to sit with myself for a bit and have this realization of, okay, so most people who are my age have been doing this for 20, 25 years. I don't fit into that group. There's a whole subset of people who've been doing this about as long as I have who are like, 20, 25 years younger than I am. I don't actually fit into that group either, but I've. I've worked insanely hard. And so I, I guess just on, on the basis of just constant working at it, there is merit to that. But I truly had to sit with myself for a couple of weeks to, to get to that point. And, and doing so was, taking a moment to be like, how did I even end up here? And so my, my journey into this space was

Not a typical journey into this space. I showed up through marketing and sales, doing cold calls on the sales side of things, moved into marketing, went back into sales and sales enablement, fell in love with the really techie stuff and just kept wanting to learn and and doing a lot of self-learning and, and community stuff. I learned about Kubernetes first, by writing the newsletter for the Data on Kubernetes community. My friend Bart, who lives nearby in, in Spain, is like the other American who survived long. It's not a lot of us who survived that long there. Being an immigrant from the US is is a totally different thing than being in the US with immigrants. Right. And I think, oftentimes a lot of my, a lot of Americans I know are like, oh, I'm going to I'm going to expat. And it's like, oh, no, no, you're an immigrant. Expat makes it sound really glamorous. But no, no, you're going to immigrate.

ADRIANA:
It's a different vibe.

CORTNEY:
Yeah. You can dress that up for social media all you want, but actually, give yourself a year and a half and you're suddenly going to be like, oh yeah, and I'm an immigrant. Realize what that is and how much work that is as well. And, and appreciate things in a different way, I think. But yeah, he was there and he kind of stumbled into the Data on Kubernetes community and was like, I, I also know nothing about tech and you studied religion. And so let's pray together that we can get through this. It was very much, and, and for some reason, I was like. Okay. Yeah. I had a newborn and I was, I was doing cold calls on the phone, and started writing this newsletter, and kept asking more questions about Kubernetes and got involved in the community. And then and then ended up in a DevRel role, that when they hired me also, I thought, why have these people hired me? I have no idea why. Like I told them, I don't know how to do any of this. Why have they hired me? And then three years later, almost three years later, made the move into community role, Nirmata, which is where I am now in the Kyverno project. So it's it's been a lot of just not knowing and being able to be like, I don't know this. Will somebody please help me. And and realizing almost everybody will. And I think that's the that's the astounding thing about this space that in my experience, because I do have, extensive more experience in other industries than in tech, it's still this point in my life, that that innate sense of. Absolutely. I'll teach you if you're willing to put in some work. Or I can see that you've been trying. Let me help you. That. That doesn't exist, at the same scale as it does here. And I think that's probably the first thing that I actually fell in love with it long before having any. Even the notion that I might like the technical side of things, it was just the human factor of, oh, well.

Look, look at this. Poor girl. She's really trying and she's trying to help us. And so, yeah, like, let's jump on a call and I'll give you time and time is the one thing that you you can't get back. Right. And people in this space are just incredibly generous with it. And so, yeah, now I'm, now I'm a techie for life. I hope.

ADRIANA:
I love that story. And, you know, you're you're so right about people's willingness to help out. I'm. Whenever I'm digging into something that I don't know super well and I reach out for help, I'm, you know, I still force myself to reach out for help, but I'm always scared. I'm like, oh, my God, they're going to think I'm an idiot. They're going to think I don't know what I'm talking about. And the patience. Like, more often than not, people are super patient. They'll send me resources, they'll do follow ups, and I'm so grateful. And I feel like Cloud Native especially, think because, and specifically like, Cloud Native open source, because of the nature of open source, there's so many contributors who are doing this. As you know, many do it as part of their jobs, but many not necessarily. Right. It's for funsies. They enjoy it. And I think that's reflected in their personality and willingness to help, right?

CORTNEY:
Yeah, it's it's incredible. Also, the refreshing thing about this space, is that there's so much to learn, like nobody is actually an expert on all of it. And when I first started, I did not realize that. I just didn't have context to realize it, either. The depth of everything. But the people who are the most expert, remind people of this all the time. Right. And, and they very much are like, oh that's a great question. Not for me. I'm an expert in this. Let me introduce you to this other person who is way more than that. And let's learn together. And there's always this undercurrent of oh, I know the basics, so let me tell you that. But let's see if we can find somebody else and learn together. I don't really know that much about that. Yeah. And that's that's phenomenal. I think that that sets those people apart. It probably is why they’re so amazing at what they do as well. But it's a, it's a constant. You come across people. I mean they're just really everybody knows who they are and and they know so much. But they consciously said, no, no, I know so much about this. But these other things I don't know about. Let's go learn about them together. And and that's that in itself is, is just really valuable. To to the community space at large, I think.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. That's what I love about tech is, like, the sky's the limit. I mean, even, you know, I, I'm one of those people has been in tech for 20 plus years. It's coming up it. Yeah. I've just hit 24, since I graduated school. I've been tech-ing for a while. But, like, the job I'm doing now is so wildly different from the job I started out with. Or even, like when you consider, AI was like, you know, not necessarily top of mind. You know, five years ago and now. And now there are people who had no expertise in the area and are gaining expertise in the area. Like it's such an opportunity for you to become an expert in a new area. I think as long as you're willing to learn along the way. And I think, you know, we're rewarded for for the desire to learn and keep up with tech.

CORTNEY:
Absolutely. That the AI space is, is mind blowing.

ADRIANA:
I know. I, I started dabbling. Like, I'm playing around with MCP servers. I'm like, there's so much I want to play around with. It's it's it breaks my brain in a, in a good way, in a good way.

CORTNEY:
In a good way. But also it's one of those things. It's like, I just don't have the time. I have this thing I need to do, and I really, really want to do a lot more of that. And where in the world do I find the time? The most lovely thing that has been said to me in a very long time. I was freaking out. I was like, I have so much to do. Where do these people find the time? And I said to my friend, Atul Sharma, who graciously gave me some of his time, and I and he, I’d seen him everywhere. Like the week leading up to our call. It was like, he was everywhere. He was. He was doing talks. He was on YouTube, he was on LinkedIn, he was everywhere. And I was like, thank you so much for your time, Atul, I'm really sorry. Like, I have to go because I don't have time. I mean, I have to go pick up my son. I have no idea where you find the time. And he starts laughing. He's so sweet. He starts laughing. He goes, oh, Cortney, I still live at home with my mom. You ARE a mom. That's why I have time. You need somebody to take care of you, and like basic things. Then you would have a lot more time to. I don't know where you find the time. I've seen you everywhere this week. Right? I hadn't said anything to him about. I've seen you everywhere. It was just like, I have no idea where you find the time to do all the things you've been doing. And that was his response. It was like, oh, I still live at home with my mom. Like she takes care of me when I when I'm not taking care of myself. I don't know where YOU find the time. And so every time I start thinking myself, oh my gosh, I don't have time for all these things, I remind myself , Atul says that I'm doing just fine. He sees me making time for a lot of things, and if he sees it then. Then it must be that way. I'm fine. Just stop pressuring yourself.

ADRIANA:
I love that, I love that, and I know I think it's such an important thing to touch upon because, like, I'm not going to lie. Like, this week, I was having a major bout of imposter syndrome, a major bout of, like, how is it that everyone else is doing, like, five kajillion things? And I'm like, I think I'm being productive, but it feels like everyone else of being like 20 times more productive than me. And also like, I don't want to burn out.

CORTNEY:
Yeah, yeah.

ADRIANA:
You know?

CORTNEY:
I can't afford to burn out. I yeah, that's exactly it's it's just a lot. I, I do. I fall back on what Atul said to me. It was about six months ago. And I fall back on all the times, like, stop, stop. You're doing just fine. You’re doing just fine. Other people see you finding time. They think that you're being really productive. Stop comparing yourself. Comparison is like the end of happiness. Just stop. You're doing what you can as best you can. Like, take a breath. Just focus on what's going on and and if you don't find time, maybe you will next week. But I have that. Like, I dial myself back that way probably 3 or 4 times a day, right?

ADRIANA:
Yeah, but it's, it's so nice that you have like kind of that anchor to pull you back. I think it's really important to have like kind of an anchoring thought or an anchor anchoring mantra to like, I'm doing okay. Sometimes for me, it's like I cry to my husband. He works from home as well. So like, I'll, I'll come down to the basement where he works.

CORTNEY:
Therapy session.

ADRIANA:
Give me a hug. And that helps.

CORTNEY:
It helps so much. Yeah. It helps so much to have that. But also, Adriana, I think I think you don't see how other people see you.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah.

CORTNEY:
You're amazing. You you give back to the community. You're maintaining one of the fastest growing projects out there. You're constantly doing DevRel work and community work and all kinds of other things and giving time to people. And you have a podcast and and you find some time to go bouldering and just... right? Take a breath and.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, I, I need a reminder too.

CORTNEY:
Yeah, absolutely. Because the truth is I, we're all, I think, incredibly hard on ourselves in general. But when other people tell me how they see me, most of the time I'm like, wow, I can't believe you see me that way. I have really like, I'm just a stepped up my social media game, right? Like, wow, I got everybody fooled here. But also. But also there's there is truth to it, right? It's like, well, I actually don't post anything that I haven't done and I don't always there's all the stuff that I have done because I don't think it's actually worth posting, which you just posted the other day about self-promotion. And it really hit home with me because there's so many times and I'm like, oh no, I won't post it. It's not really like, oh no, I won't post it. But yeah, when other people tell you how they see you, right? And I'm always like, oh, it's not quite that, but also it's not, not that. It's, it's somewhere in the middle.

And I try to hold on to those moments. They're, they're few and far between. But I do, try to hold on to them for me. They're, they're priceless for my for my mental health and to keep myself balanced because it's like, okay, like you're being incredibly hard on yourself. There are other people who see the effort that you make, and they appreciate what it is that you get done. And if this week it's less, it's less and next week will be more. But like be kind to yourself. So if you're ever like, I'm not being productive, you just give me a call and be like, Adriana.

ADRIANA:
I know, I know.

CORTNEY:
Let me remind you that last week you were doing this and this, this, this. I'm like, I see you, I. See your effort, like, Be a little bit nicer to yourself.

ADRIANA:
Good advice on this podcast. And you're right. I mean, even what you were saying, like people see you and a like I think we, we are extra hard on ourselves even like when we look in the mirror, you know, you. Even my daughter the other day...

CORTNEY:
Oh my goodness.

ADRIANA:
She said, I look horrible. I'm like, what the hell are you talking about? Like, what are you seeing that I don't see? And yet, you know, we tend to do that. I think women tend to be extra hard on themselves. I'm not saying men also aren't, but I do feel like women get to be tend to be extra hard on themselves when it comes to this.

CORTNEY:
I think in different ways. I think many men are definitely hard on themselves. But they're hard on themselves in very different ways than than women. And, and, they have different, different types of pressures on them. I think a lot of pressure that men feel that they, they put it on themselves. Whereas women, we feel a lot of pressure that we haven't always put on ourselves. It's just completely there and it's coming from external forces and you don't. At least in my case, I don't always know how to handle that, or it takes me a while to figure out that, oh, like, that's not actually my criteria. It's somebody else's. Why am I feeling like I need to live up to that? I think men a lot of times they just, they have a the ones who are very hard on themselves have a very high criteria. Right. And and so it's, it's a different the external internal factors I think are different than also women. We just compound it with our own internal, dialogues as well. Like your daughter at the age that she is, being like, I look terrible. Oh my gosh. Like I see photos of myself and I come home to visit my parents when I was like 16, 17. And I'm like, dang, I was cute. Like like if I had realized then. That I was that cute, I would have taken over the world. But like, I didn't. And now it's late. And now I'm just. I'm just this. And it's good.

ADRIANA:
You're taking over the world.

CORTNEY:
Yeah. There's a different, different ways in taking over the world.

ADRIANA:
That's right.

CORTNEY:
But it’s just perspective.

ADRIANA:
It's so true. I wanted to switch gears a little bit, because, you know, I, I want to, I love talking to other like, working moms in tech. I feel like we need to have more of these conversations. Certainly. Like when, when I had my daughter, like, coming back to work right after mat leave. Holy crap. I just felt like I sucked at everything. And, you know, in, in Canada, we get, like, a year of mat leave. I'd been away for a year, and. And so this extreme guilt of, like, I haven't been productive. What are they going to think of me? And then having to, like, leave early because. Well, daycare.

Or or leaving extra early because your kid has a fever and can't be at daycare. You know, and you and you, you mentioned that you have, a 21 year old and a 6 year old.

CORTNEY:
Yes.

ADRIANA:
And and I can imagine how, interesting that must have been.

CORTNEY:
My home is bipolar. I've got a 21 year old who I'm trying to convince she's not 6, and a 6 year old that I'm trying to convince is not 21. They keep me very, very preoccupied. But, yeah, this is something I don't think we talk about enough. Parenting in general is difficult. And it has its own emotional things tied to it. And, and moms and dads both live that. But, women working in tech, especially if you do take time off, things move so quickly in the space. Right. And so if you actually take the time off to focus on yourself and your child and your family, and by the time you come back, the feeling of I suck at this is because so much has changed. It doesn't matter if you took six weeks or if you took a year. So much has changed. And there's this thought as I've advanced to this point and so why am I? Why am I all of a sudden behind again? And, and I think it's that I just feel like you have to catch up and if it's six weeks or a year, but you've got that whole thing to catch up to, to all of the people around you who didn't take any time off. They've just been living that learning curve because it's happening in real time for them. And, and figuring out how to manage that and at the same time manage the mom guilt of I'm leaving my child at childcare.

ADRIANA:
Oh, yeah.

CORTNEY:
Right. The mom guilt of I just left my child and I'm trying to get back into this, this other thing, whether it's career because I love it or something else. But, like, I just left my child. There's a stigma to that, whether people want to admit it or not. There is. And, and there's an emotional feeling of that as well, whether you believe the stigma or not, it like you still feel the guilt of, okay, so I just left my child behind on top of it to come take my career back over. And now here I am, and I'm not up to date on anything. And so I suck as a mom and I suck at my career. It's like I suck at everything going on in my life. And also, it might have been six weeks, it might have been a year, but this body still is not mine.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

CORTNEY:
Right. And so I suck at that too. There's there's people don't talk about that because it's not a fun thing to talk about. But at the same time, there's so much power in it for everyone who actually goes through that curve and and goes goes through that life experience and for the people around them as well. Right. Because in order to catch up, it requires a lot of support from other people, whether it's a spouse or a co-parent, partner, or in my case, my, my older daughter. I was like, can you please hold your brother? I just really need to finish this right. And she so lovingly did. And that was a growth in our relationship as well. But for my my colleagues, people who are around you, they also participate in that knowingly or unknowingly. They're they're a part of that. And they can make that so much better and, and nicer for people or so much worse as well. And so not having those conversations really takes away the possibility for people who are around women going through this to be able to be helpful and supportive. Because a lot of times you don't know what to do or how to be supportive because there aren't conversations around it.

ADRIANA:
It's so true. It's so true. Yeah. I mean, even even when you're pregnant, a lot of people don't know how to act around you. Like when I was pregnant, I swear to God, I got so mad because everyone's like, how are you feeling? I'm like, what? Like, I'm not an invalid. I'm not sick. I'm just growing a human. Like, I'm fine. Like, I'll tell you if I’m not okay.

CORTNEY:
Yeah.

ADRIANA:
I was a grumpy pregnant woman. I'm sorry to say. I'm like, just treat me normal.

CORTNEY:
Well, that's another thing, though. Exactly what you're saying. I had this whole phase with my son that it was like I'm still me, right? Because all of a sudden, you start having a first name and you just be. In my case, I'm just Ethan's mom, so, like, a whole subset of the world...

ADRIANA:
Oh, yeah.

CORTNEY:
That I actually knew prior to being Ethan's mom. I have now just become Ethan's mom. Oh, there's Ethan's mom, which I'm proud to be. Ethan's mom. It's not that, but also, it's like, well, but that's like a facet of who I am. Actually, I'm Cortney, and I'm still a whole human being who's got like, oh, a whole, like, life. And history long before I was Ethan's mom. And how does that suddenly get erased? Right. And and it and it's totally erased for some people. And that is really hard. It's it's really, really difficult to to just have a huge part of your being an existence just totally unrecognized because you have a cute kid. Right. And and not to take away from my super cute kid because he is, he's super cute, but also, I'm more than just his mom. And that that is very difficult, at least for me. It was it was very difficult to navigate, like, can you please just call me by my name or not say anything at all? Because I exist and and again, these are things that I think have been universally. Everybody is like, how are you? How are you feeling? Just like you were saying, right? Like, oh, look at you. How are you feeling? How how is everything going? And everybody tiptoes around. And then all of a sudden, just like that, it's like, oh, you don't really exist that much anymore. How’s the baby?

ADRIANA:
How’s the baby.

CORTNEY:
How’s the baby? How's the how's the child? How's the teenager? How's it? Which is great. And I and I love that people care. But also it's like, can you also ask me if I'm doing all right? Because like, also they're my my kids ability to be okay very much depends on whether I'm all right or not. So true. And so not having those conversations or just being able to say those things without worrying how they might trigger or affect other people takes away the possibility for others to to recognize that and and know that they probably should ask how you are and not just your not just your new baby or. Right, that they you still exist and you still want them to ask about you because I think a lot of people also think that you're so excited to be in a mom that that's what you want to talk about all the time.

And it's like, oh, look at you. That's because you're the dad. And so you get a break or oh, look at you, you're good. You're you're young. Your parents got tired of talking about you once in a while, too. And those things are fine. But not not having those conversations doesn't allow people to kind of have that that context. So.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, I totally agree. And I think another one, that hit me, when I became a mom was like, get coming to terms with being a mom. Like, I could not for the longest time have that mom feeling. I'm like, I, I don't see myself as someone's mom. And to add insult to injury, for for my case, like I couldn't breastfeed my daughter, I had to rely on formula at an early age. And when my daughter was two months old, my grandma died in Brazil and I couldn't go to her funeral. And the minute I heard the news, my milk dried. Like I could just feel it go... So like, she was a formula fed baby. And first of all, like the shit I got from other moms for doing that.

CORTNEY:
Yeah.

ADRIANA:
It's like it. It killed my self-esteem. And then I'm like, great. I can't even provide for my daughter. I am a terrible mom because I can't breastfeed her. And and so, like, that messes with you. The change in routine messes with you because you're like, I used to be able to do this, and now I am tethered to this human who depends on me for everything, and I have to wipe its ass.

CORTNEY:
Yeah. You know.

ADRIANA:
It's, it's very jarring. And, like, for me, I had postpartum depression as well, and I didn't even recognize that. It was my husband who was like, this doesn't look right. And, you know, saw it, sought help, sought support from some of our friends to, you know, help support me. And these are things that, like, when you're in the thick of it, you don't even notice.

CORTNEY:
So you're just trying to survive.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah.

CORTNEY:
I think one of the best things I ever read about motherhood, it was about the fact that in in war, they use lack of sleep as torture. Right. And so this is a very well-studied way to torture someone is to just not allow them to sleep or have quality sleep, or just let them barely fall asleep and. Wake them up.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. That fucks with you.

CORTNEY:
That is the correlation of having a newborn, as a mother.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, I and that's why I was laughing when you mentioned the lack of sleep thing because I'm like, oh my God, yes, I can complete. Yes.

CORTNEY:
Yeah.

ADRIANA:
That is that is a form of torture.

CORTNEY:
It is a form of torture. And people who are around you who are sleeping well, at first it's like, okay, well I'm fine, I'm just a little tired, but after a few months it's like truly my like I would wake up and it was like I'd look at my husband still laying there asleep and really just despise him because it was like, how can you not hear this child? Like, how are you not? And he truly didn't. Right. How? I still have no idea. But it was infuriating.

ADRIANA:
Oh yeah. Yeah.

CORTNEY:
Infuriating that he just didn't wake up. Right. And and at first it was fine, but after a few months, it was just so unbearable that I left the room and we just moved into totally different rooms that I wouldn't have to see him not wake up because I wanted to strangle him every time, like, kick in to wake him up once the baby was asleep, just so that he would have some idea of what it was that I was living through. The the number of times that I just felt insanely inadequate. Because also, you're given a human being that you have no idea what they actually need.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

CORTNEY:
I would look at other women around me, and, and also, I was, my, my daughter, I adopted her, and she's two and a half, so I didn't do the newborn thing with her. I did that the two and three year old thing with her, which was...

ADRIANA:
Always fun.

CORTNEY:
Yeah. And also I was clearly much younger. And so it was just like oh wow wow okay. Wow. Oh look. I actually adopted a dinosaur. Wow. I like I don't know what's going on. But my son, my he he showed up ten days late, and so the time that my parents had allotted to be there with us was cut short because she showed up late, and he was born, and then he suddenly, they suddenly left. And here I was living in Spain. No extended family, no community around me, no nothing. Dealing with all of it, all by myself. And my husband would get up and he'd go to work, and he's very sweet and whatever, but he'd come home and I'd be like, please, like, please take the baby. Yeah, because I was breastfeeding. It was like. And then he'd try to give me a hug and to be like, don't touch me. But it was because I had somebody attached to me.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's another thing too, that I. Am. So you're like, don't.

CORTNEY:
So overstimulated. Like, I understand you just want to give me a hug, but like, please don't. Because like, oh my gosh. I'm just I just can't and it took everything I had to just get through that. And I'd see these other women I was supposed to go to, to a breastfeeding like a couple of weeks after I'd had my son. And I remember I got up and I did not feel like being up because I hadn't slept at all. But it was like, okay, I'm going to drag myself to this thing. And I got up and I got dressed, and then he puked on me. And so I changed, like, I changed my clothes. And then I got him totally dressed. And then he had one of those explosive, like, just shit shows up the back of his, like, onesie. And it was like, oh.

We’re already running late. I'm never going to make it. And I thought, I like, bathed the child and like, redressed him. We finally get out of the house, I show up, everybody. There's like a whole room of women who are just very serene and very motherly and, like, who had stereotypical way. And they're all seated in dresses and, like, breastfeeding their baby. And I show up, I'm like scattered. My hair is everywhere. I have no idea what I'm even wearing. I haven't showered for a week because, like, when am I going to like, I just couldn't. It was everything it took for me to just breathe and function. And here they all are. They're all put together like, calm. And and I showed up like 45 minutes late, so it was like 20 minutes left. And the whole 20 minutes I sat there, my son was crying, right. Everybody else's babies were calm and they're doing tummy time. They're like, all fine. And my my kid is crying. I'm like tattered mess. And the 20 minutes I was there, I was just truly counting down the time to be able to leave because I was holding back tears. I just was like, I should not be doing this. I was not made for this. Clearly, I am looking at a room of women. I was not built for this. This is not what I was built for. I got home and got through the door and had my son on a blanket and dragged him to crawling while I was crying into the living room so that if I like, fell asleep, my husband would think that we were just there because I was so overwhelmed with with everything.

And here, a year and a half later, taking my son to daycare and a mom at this breastfeeding class who had had twins. And I vividly remember her sitting there changing from one to the other, and she was just totally capable of two. And I had never felt so incapable in my life. And now she's a very good friend of mine, and her kids are very good friends of my son. But I remember I told her, wow, the first time I saw you, this is the situation. And and truly, I just felt so overwhelmed. And it was because she was asking me for help and she was apologizing for asking me for help. And she she was like, I'm really sorry. But like, my sisters are all out of town and so's my mom. Would you be able to? And I was like, of course, yeah, I really and she felt so bad about asking me for help. And I told her it was the first time I saw you like you were. You were serenely taking care of two kids like, oh my gosh, it's fine that you asked for help and so on. And she told me she's like, well, that was because I have three sisters and my mom. And so they were staying with me like, I don't know how anybody could do it otherwise. And it was, again, that whole concept and having context, right, to take a moment and be like, oh, and realize everybody who was actually in that room, I live in this town. I know them all now because the kids go to school with my kids. They all have a community of help because they didn't immigrate somewhere else where they don't have extended family and they don't have anyone to call.

And so if they were, if they were scattered and needed to sleep, they had somebody to hold their baby where they did. So I didn't have that. And, and having that context and people just don't talk about it enough. If, if I had heard anybody say, take a moment for yourself and stop comparing, because if you don't have the same type of community support or the same type of similar support, or that you're probably doing just fine, you're actually going through a torturous situation that they do in war, right?

ADRIANA:
Like, yeah.

CORTNEY:
The fact that you're holding yourselves together is pretty good. Like, just sit with the fact that you're getting through it. I, I wouldn't have suffered anywhere near as much. Right. I wouldn't have suffered anywhere near as much. So every time. And I, I'm very grateful that you bring this up often because I think it's it needs to be it's not a taboo and it needs to be talked about. And the more people talk about it, the more others start to recognize it. One, it does take a community, whether we like it or not. It takes a community. And so be part of that community in whatever way you can be. Yeah, even if it's just showing some amount of moral support at work, let you be part of that community, in whatever way you can be. And to for women who are going through it, knowing this might be awful for a while, but like other people have survived it.

And so it's okay for me to say it's really awful. And nobody's going to think worse of me because somebody else has gone through this and has openly said, it's really awful. Makes it okay. And and making that okay actually helps the mother be better because it takes the shame away from things. And and shame is such a powerful thing that is not good for anyone. Right. And, and I think parenting is so hard on its own anyway, being a mom, going through all of those different things and challenges a lot of shame comes with it because you don't really know what, like how you're going to react.

And also every kid is different. And so a different mom, right? You're different if you have more than one. Turns out you end up being a different mom and you're at a different phase in your life and at a different age and a different everything. And you don't know how one might affect you in comparison to another, so being open about that empowers other women who are going through it to be like, okay, it's it's okay that I think this is awful. Because turns out it is, but it will be short lived, like there is another phase coming. And so I'm just I'll get through it and I'll live and I'll be okay. So, thank you for always bringing things like this up and advocating for it, because it is it's really important. And for the dads and the men who are around working with us, they want to be helpful.

Like, I've yet to meet a man that doesn't think that their own mother is a superwoman. It's like their moms, their sisters, when you look at it. And I always say this, in the techie world, people get really into manga and and superhero things. This is this is true. It's not just a weird stigma. It's not everyone. Right? But that there is like a subset of us that like these things. But almost all of that is written by men. And inevitably the most powerful characters are women. Even the Lord of the Rings the, the powerful person who, like, takes away the ring is a woman. It was written by a man. And so I think oftentimes we lose sight of that as well.

Yeah, like there are a lot of men out there who are advocates and who want to be supportive, and they want to be helpful, but they don't know what to do. And so unless we have these conversations, the the can't be added to be helpful because they don't know.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. And by like raising that awareness so that they know like what we're going through I mean yeah you go through it to a certain extent with your spouse. If you're if your spouse has had a child and you know, you're, you're, you're helping to raise, but, it's it's a different vibe to I think oftentimes when you're in your own little world, you think, oh, this only applies to me. Yeah. And then have other people talk about it. You're like, oh, that happens to others. Like, you know, when I was pregnant, I was I was so grateful to be pregnant because we wanted a child, but like, oh my God, I fucking hated being pregnant. And I think both can exist, you know?

CORTNEY:
Yes.

ADRIANA:
I did not love how my body changed. I'm sorry. You know, I was used to running around and climbing, and then I couldn't.

CORTNEY:
No, I envy the women who were like, I love being pregnant. And for the longest time, I was like, I wish I did, but oh, my God, it's just that so uncomfortable. And I am so swollen and I am so sick, like. And I am so sick of thinking about every last little thing that I eat. And I really just miss caffeine.

ADRIANA:
I know, like, am I allowed to do this? I can't eat sushi. Oops. I ate goat cheese by accident. I'm fucked. Yeah, I, I.

CORTNEY:
Can, I just have a piece of sliced turkey because it's in the fridge and I don't have to cook it. Oh my God, turns out I can't. What is listeria anyway? I don't even know what it is, but I'm so afraid of getting it.

ADRIANA:
Exactly, exactly. Yeah, all these things you have to worry about. But, you know, unless you're in it, you don't know. So to be able to talk about that, and have these conversations openly and, you know, make it a safe space for other, you know, moms, moms to be, to have, you know, to know, like, yeah, we got you. We've been through it. It'll be okay.

CORTNEY:
It'll be okay.

ADRIANA:
You can bitch about it, too. It's okay. Willing to hear all sides of the story, right. There will be. There will be women. And I'm so grateful for them. The ones who are, like, just by nature, super motherly and and caring and totally fine with setting themselves aside and being so-and-so's mom. Those women exist, and they should have a platform in which. But also turns out, at least in my experience, they're not the majority. They're part of.

CORTNEY:
There's not really a majority. Everyone's experiences is different, and unique, but there are certain things that, that tie us all together, like the lack of sleep and the overwhelming rage at your husband for not waking up and like. Like, those things are real. And they happened to to all of us at the end of the day. And so, making spaces to, to talk about that is, is helpful for everyone. And I don't care how uncomfortable it might make some people, at the end of the day, they're uncomfortable because they're struggling to hear things that they didn't know, and probably feel bad that they weren't able to provide more support. Right? Yes. And so it's important for them to be uncomfortable so that the next time they, they aren't uncomfortable with the situation.

ADRIANA:
Exactly. We got to normalize this at the end of the day.

CORTNEY:
Yeah.

ADRIANA:
Awesome. Well thank you. Well we are coming up on time. But before we wrap up, do you have any parting words of wisdom?

CORTNEY:
I don't consider myself to be very wise. I think my my parting words of wisdom, I it's it's a it's a quote that I personally really like by Winston Churchill. If you're going through hell, keep going. Don't stop there. If you're having a bad day, like, just keep going, keep going. The sun will come up. Tomorrow is a new opportunity. Go running to it with your arms open for for something better. That's a new day. Start over. But yeah, if you're going through hell, keep going. Don't don't stop there. Just just keep chugging through. And. And tomorrow's tomorrow will be a better day. That's that's it. That's that's how I try to get through my weeks.

ADRIANA:
That's great. I love that. That's such a great quote. Thank you so much for sharing. And, thank you so much, Cortney, for geeking out with me today. Don’t forget to subscribe, nd be sure to check the show notes and additional resources to connect with us and our guests on social media. Until next time...

CORTNEY:
Geek out, peace out.

ADRIANA:
Geeking Out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Villela. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking Out is also produced by my daughter, Hannah Maxwell, who, incidentally designed all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the socials by going to bento.me/geekingout.

Geeking Out will be taking a short break for the holidays, but expect all new episodes starting in early January 2026. Peace out and geek out.

The One Where We Geek Out on the Power of Invisibility with Deana Solis

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Deana Solis, Adriana Villela) — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 05:00:00 +0000

Key takeaways:

It's important for junior folks to have a breadth of experience early in their careers to understand what they like and don't like, and to help shape what they want to do in their tech careers.
Developers can't work in isolation and not care about the "big picture" of the product or service that they're working on. That's like moving to a new country and not caring about the cultural differences.
Being invisible is a superpower, because it allows you to quietly learn, observe, and take things in.
Being a quiet listener shouldn't be confounded with not speaking up due to shyness.
It's important to use your voice to speak up and provide a safe place for others to speak up
We get into tech through different ways, have different skills, and different experiences, and these differences are what make for a successful team.
There's not one way to succeed and make an impact in tech (and other professions), whether you're in upper management, an engineer, or anything in-between.
As a senior person, you can also learn a lot from junior engineers and mid-level engineers, bringing in a different point of view
Mentoring is about helping your mentees find their own strengths, and also learning from your mentees, as they always have something interesting to bring to the table.
If you're going to be a manager, you've got to be really understanding of what your organization's strategic direction is, what its vision is, what its values truly are, and decide are you aligned enough to be able to represent that as a manager?
University is a humbling experience of suddenly being surrounded by way smarter people than you
There are different skills to being a student vs being an employee
There is a distinction between FinOps for the Cloud and "traditional" FinOps!
Someone who works in FinOps (within the context of Cloud) has an understanding of how cloud vendors work and how things like workload, retention policies, autoscaling thresholds, etc. affect your cloud spend.

About our guest:

Deana Solis is the youngest daughter of Filipino immigrants and the mom of a biracial son. She credits her decades long career in tech for teaching her how to unplug from the grid in meaningful ways, connect with her ancestors, build community where she lives, and leave places better than she found them.

She is a FinOps Foundation ambassador and mentor, known for her contributions in workgroups, certification curriculum, and humanizing FinOps talks.

Find our guest on:

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show notes:

Carmen Huidobro on Geeking Out, talking about reframing nervousness
Ixchel Ruiz on Geeking Out, talking about the importance of seeing people like us being represented
Aicha Laafia on Geeking Out (she was directly inspired by Ixchel Ruiz's talks)
Charity Majors on Geeking Out
Kelsey Hightower on Geeking Out
Liz Fong-Jones on Geeking Out
What is FinOps?
FP&A
Comptroller

Transcript:
ADRIANA:
Hey everyone, welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast in which we dive into the career journeys of some of the amazing humans in tech and geek out on topics like software development, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada.

ADRIANA:
And geeking out with me today I have Deana Solis. Welcome, Deana!

DEANA:
Thank you. Happy to be here.

ADRIANA:
And where are you calling from?

DEANA:
I'm in Vancouver, Washington.

ADRIANA:
Oh, cool. That's awesome. So before, before I introed you in, we were talking about pronouncing names, and, I thought it was interesting, so I wanted to bring it up on the podcast because I thought your name was pronounced “De-anna”, but it's actually “Dean-a”. And tell the story behind that, because I thought it was kind of cool.

DEANA:
You know, I have always blamed this on my dad because I knew the story. They were Rat Pack fans, and Dean Martin, was a favorite. My dad was a big audiophile. We had his records, so I just blamed him. It turns out that my mom was the big Dean Martin fan. She picked the name, and had I been a boy, I would have been Dean. But I wasn’t. So Deana.

ADRIANA:
That is so cool. I love that that's such a great name origin story.

DEANA:
But considering my last name and you pronounced that exactly correctly, it's perfectly acceptable to expect to pronounce it Deanna or Deanna, with all the syllables. But it's not. So.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Fair, fair. Well, I mean, I think it's a it's a really great way to remember, though, in, in terms of pronouncing your name like, oh, I always think of like the Dean Martin reference. That's awesome. Well, so are you ready for our icebreaker questions?

DEANA:
Yes.

ADRIANA:
AV: Okay. First question. Are you a lefty or a righty?

DEANA:
Lefty.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, I always get... you... if you watch the show, you know, I always get excited about lefties. Were you ever, did anyone ever try to force you, to write right handed when you were growing up? Or, like, try to change anything about your leftiness?

DEANA:
Fortunately, in that area, no. However, I am somewhat ambidextrous. Like in sports. I think I'm I'm somewhat I'm ambidextrous. I throw right-handed. In basketball you wouldn't know which which I favor. But in, in baseball I would left because the coaches told me that was an advantage. And, so I could adapt and I had to throw right handed because like, in my first couple of years of that sport, I didn't buy my own glove. I got the hand-me-down. And also I am disproportionately surrounded by other left handers.

ADRIANA:
Oh no way. That is super cool.

DEANA:
Yeah. My my partner and his oldest son. My best friend's husband. Yeah, it's just funny.

ADRIANA:
Wow. One comment I was going to make because you said that you're, like, ambidextrous. For certain things, I tend to be, I tend to be left handed for most things, but for whatever reason, archery. Not not that I have done archery often, but when I've picked up a bow and arrow, I do it the right handed way. And my daughter, who is right handed, does it the left handed way.

DEANA:
Oh that's interesting. My son's an archer.

ADRIANA:
Oh, really? That's cool.

DEANA:
He's done that thing where he has, hit the bull's eye and then split it with his next arrow.

ADRIANA:
He can do that?

DEANA:
I don't know how close he was, but even close distance, that's not easy to do. And, I'm. I'm kind of proud of that. I had nothing to do with it.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, that is a cool skill. Just one more thing. One more curiosity on the left handed thread. Do you mouse left or right handed?

DEANA:
Oh, well, so I don't, I, what is it? Trackpad. What do you call it?

ADRIANA:
Yeah, trackpad. Do you trackpad left or right handed?

DEANA:
I think mostly right. Me too. Yeah. Me too, I, I tried, like because that's how I learned, like, when a mouse was presented to me and, you know, my, my dad's the techie in the, in the family. So he introduced me to a mouse and I'm like, so I picked it up with my, with my right hand. And I could not even fathom using a left handed mouse.

DEANA:
But do you do, like, multiple monitors?

ADRIANA:
Sometimes. Sometimes.

DEANA:
So I have found that when I'm moving windows around, or. Yeah, windows from one monitor to another or just from one side of the screen to another. I tend to be a two handed trackpad.

ADRIANA:
Oh!

DEANA:
You can, you know, continue to swipe while you're, without letting go of a thing. And I just, I wish I could teach it, but I don't know how I do it.

ADRIANA:
I've done that on occasion. Not necessarily with dragging monitors, but like, I know what you're talking about. It comes in handy Do you prefer iPhone or Android?

DEANA:
I think that I can adapt to either one, but I've owned far more iPhones. But hopefully, you know, my frequency of changing them is much less. And I'd be open to to trying one of the Androids because I have seen some really interesting products, but I probably get like a, a couple of generations old one.

ADRIANA:
Okay. Next question. Do you prefer Mac, Linux or Windows?

DEANA:
I don't think I could live without all three. Because I do quite a bit in the Azure space. And so, being closer to the, the Microsoft ecosystem, and all my keyboard shortcuts that are muscle memory are from Windows. And I love my Mac. It's a design thing, but it's kind of a privilege to be able to answer that question at all.

ADRIANA:
And that's good. Yeah, that's I, I like that.

DEANA:
And the Linux thing, you know, all the workloads that scale and that, that I'm, that my clients are using. You know, I wouldn't I wouldn't have a job if there weren't a ton of, of Linux workloads. I haven't been on a Linux desktop since 1999. So that was when I it pretty much lost its, its like, shine as, as a, as a personal, operating system for, for, for me. But, I will say that I still have my last Windows laptop from a few years ago that, you know, it can't be updated anymore. And I keep it around thinking, just maybe I could just put a Linux OS on there and give it a new life.

ADRIANA:
Ooh, yes, that sounds like a fun little side project. Yeah.

DEANA:
In all my free time.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I gotta gotta find that time first. Right? Okay. Next question. Do you have a favorite programing language?

DEANA:
I do not. I think I told you, I, I never contributed, any code to to an open source project or I, I'm, I generally don't write it. Maybe policies, some YAML things and, and, edit existing Python scripts or, but that I'm more... since I have an app... ops background, I'm more comfortable with Python or I think I, I tried to learn Ruby and then the, the project that I was specifically learning it for completely changed directions in terms of like the whole pipeline, the whole toolchain changed and it was like, okay, drop that, learn this. And then also your role is going to change because we really need someone to, to, know about this particular skill set. And so, so it was just more in my wheelhouse and didn't go back to it. I just always sort of thought, okay, I'm going to finish that, that beginner Python course. But I don't need it to do the job that that my role is defined for.

ADRIANA:
That's cool, that's cool. Next question. Do you prefer dev or ops? I think I might know your answer.

DEANA:
Ops is obviously my comfort zone, and I'm such a process person. But I'm finding more and more that I need to lean into the dev, because those are processes that I'm starting to understand in terms of what drives businesses and what drives value. And so I, I it's the area where I would tend to lean, but they are definitely, inseparable. The more a company leans toward one or the other and says, oh no, we can have a vendor do that or we can outsource that. The less healthy I think it is in the long term for that organizational culture.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, I, I agree with you. And, you know, this brings up something that I've had a debate with, with some people on. I think I've even posted a thing on LinkedIn a while back, which is, you know, having devs be aware, more concerned or have knowledge, high level knowledge of, of ops things and vice versa. Right. Which, you know, in, in some ways I, I suppose we require ops people to be more versed in the dev world because of things like infrastructure as code, right, where you're really bringing those software engineering principles into the ops world. And yet you don't see as much of, like, you meet some developers who are like, I'm just going to write my code. I don't care how it's containerized. I don't care what happens after I deliver my code. What, do you have any interesting thoughts on that?

DEANA:
I really do think that when, when you're a junior dev or a junior, technologist, you know, just let's take the devs and the ops out of it. When you're, a junior software engineer getting into it and thinking, well, which direction am I going to go in? You absolutely need to do a rotation and see what actually fits your your strength and your biases or your heuristics, whatever the internals, that, where you can lean into your strengths and get some confidence so that you can then tackle the next thing. Or recognize that, oh, okay, this is really challenging for me. You've got to be able to rotate through both. When you're dealing with senior folks who have done it a certain way, if they're able to isolate, there's not a whole lot of value in trying to pull them into from one into the other. I don't actually see the sort of dichotomy that you described. I see more of whichever one you're in because I, I am in, a more split organization. And I think the bigger the enterprise is, you tend to see a lot more division of, of, labor in the roles in the way that the roles are defined.

ADRIANA:
Very true.

DEANA:
And I think that the folks who are, if you're in ops now, you need to have that enough of the dev to be able to function. Because it's moving so fast. You cannot be like me in, in the early 2000s with a dozen SSH terminals. Hitting enter, just in the right sequence. Because that's what you had to do without, without a control plane. So yeah, absolutely. The ops folks have to have that as a minimum. But I don't think that that, devs who want to like, software developers who are actually trying to make their product more effective, they have to be just as conscious of, at the very least, what their, what their organization, what their client prefers, because it's sort of like moving to a new country and and not caring, about cultural differences. It's because because there are going to be some assumptions that you should know about when you start thinking like, what am I optimizing for? You know, I am... like most of my job is optimizing something. And and what people don't realize, it's, you can optimize for competing things. You have to remember which one you picked when you got to that fork in the road. And for a software developer who cares about speed, it might not be as important to understand how their platform that they're developing, that they're going to deploy from, operates scale. Right. So yeah, I, I see that as being such an important way to, grow in your, in your own skill is to understand how the stuff you do interacts with the ground you’re standing on.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Well, thanks for thanks for sharing your take on this. Next question. Do you prefer JSON or YAML?

DEANA:
So the the JSON files that I, that I deal with, like on a regular basis are things that are outputs. You know, they're things that I read, and I can convert it to a CSV or, you know, depending on, on what the, what the use case is and who the end user is that needs that data. It may not always be another, another programmer. It may not be another application that's pulling that in. It's just that's how the output came out... Because we have no idea who developed that last application or that last, little function that put it out. And so this is what we've got. How do we convert it to what we need. And so that's sort of been my my area of dealing with it. YAML files can be tiny and it can just be a rule set and it can be... either one is is somewhat readable. But but that's coming from someone who likes to read spreadsheets. So.

ADRIANA:
I don't mind spreadsheets. I don't mind spreadsheets. Like, I'll, I'll read like CSV if it's in a spreadsheet for like, you know, open it in Excel. Good. I'm good. Okay. Next question. Do you prefer spaces or tabs? Do you have a preference?

DEANA:
I don’t have preference, I don't even know what I, I think the whatever the the IDE is, tells me which one is the one I'm supposed to use.

ADRIANA:
Fair enough, fair enough. Two more questions. Do you prefer to consume content through video or text?

DEANA:
I'm one of those auditory learners. And I don't even know if I definitely need both. And I, I tend to put a lot of content in writing more than I would in video. But I do consume probably more video because I can do it at double speed or podcasts at double speed because I just, I need to know if the information is there. Yeah. And while I'm looking at something else or while I'm. I'm, walking or driving. And I can, I can process it that way. Whereas if I'm sitting down to read it, I better have time, because I think I'm a slower reader and reading is just never it's never as, sticky as I need it to be.

ADRIANA:
Right, right.

DEANA:
But if something comes without any documentation, I will dismiss it and go to a better source. I need recommendation to sort of prove it out to me so I can, I can, see if I would write it differently or, if my memory matches, the words.

ADRIANA:
Yep, that makes sense. It's interesting what you were saying about, you know, putting podcasts on, on double speed. Like, I love listening to podcasts. I'm a huge podcast junkie. Like, I'll have a podcast on while I'm, like, brushing my teeth or, like, doing stuff around the house. But there is one thing I can't do, which is put podcasts on double speed. It like it breaks my brain. I start when I accidentally hit like the faster speed setting on my podcast. I'm like, what is going on?

DEANA:
You know, on my iPhone, on the YouTube app, when I'm, watching video content. I know that I can just hold my thumb down on the screen and it automatically goes to double speed. And that is probably my my favorite feature of having that app on my phone. And it's probably comes from my impatience with people in conversations. Not this one, but.

ADRIANA:
I, I, I know exactly what you mean. It's like, get to the point. I prefer reading over, over video. And for similar reasons. I feel like when I, when I watch a video, I need to like carve out time. But I'm also like too ADHD to pay attention to the video. And for reading I love skimming and, and you know, it's like, okay, just get me to the point where I need to get to.

DEANA:
I think maybe growing up in a household where, where two languages were spoken, but not by me. I heard Tagalog. My parents are Filipino. I heard it spoken a lot, and often directly to me and my siblings, but I didn't have to respond in it, I responded in English. So I think, I think because... maybe that set my brain up to be really sensitive to, are they talking to me? And so the way that a word is set or I listen to tone, I love video too. If it's like this, where I can actually look at you and say, okay, the the head nods and the body language. But where the video is, something on a stage far away. I will just I'll listen to audio only, and I will miss that screen and just not even pay attention to the slides. I'll just be listening for... for tone and, words that I have not heard before, or words that are used in a way that I'm not used to using them. You know, there's so many reused and overused terms. Just from, you know, are you talking about the the function or the application vendor that just came out with a new thing? And they'll, they will have used the same, same term. I can't think of one right now.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. No, I know what exactly what your, what you mean. And that, of course, adds to, that adds to confusion. Okay. Final question. What's your superpower?

DEANA:
I thought about this one a lot because I hear it. I think I've heard people ask it and I've been asked for a long time. And, you know, I think when you're asked in an interview, you think of, you try to think of something to impress them. I think that superpowers come from recognizing what your vulnerability is. That makes you different. And understanding all of the ways that you can use it to make everything else you care about, doing, make that better. And I think that I have landed on the same one that I used to use, which is invisibility, because sometimes when I'm in a room, people don't realize that I'm listening and gathering information. And recently, I heard it. Heard being invisible being compared to, the CIA. You know, they're never, they're not supposed to be visible. They can't really do their job gathering intelligence if they're super visible. I think in the observability space and in the... in my area, the FinOps space. You know, we don't want our tools and our processes to be in the front. They should just be quietly doing their jobs. And I think that that's kind of how I've spent a lot of my career, is just quietly doing the job and learning and understanding when, when, I needed to adjust. And so that invisibility has let me go into spaces and, and make observations that maybe I wouldn't have been able to before. When I learned to sort of turn it on and turn it off, that's when it became a superpower. When I learned to start being visible, start using my voice. In fact, that's when I realized, oh, this is this is actually a strength.

ADRIANA:
Wow. I love that so much. I first of all, I love your definition of what a superpower is. That's amazing. And secondly, invisibility. I think that's the first time we've had that on, on the podcast. And it's so true. There's something to be said about just being the the quiet listener. And then, as you said, to be able to turn it off and on as needed. Because I think being the quiet listener shouldn't be confounded with being too afraid to speak up. Which, unfortunately, you know, a lot of us get get caught up in that. Especially, I have to say, especially for women, you know, I feel like I have to sort of just remind myself, you know, like, I have a seat at the table. I deserve to be here. I should speak up if I have something to say.

DEANA:
It is intertwined with, the imposter syndrome that people say, oh, you've got imposter syndrome, or that we that that label that we put on ourselves when, when really something about, growing up, kind of being taught to be invisible. You would think that that's a very negative thing. But everyone, all of my, my ancestors, my, my elders who who taught me to, not be visible did it from a place of love. They did it from a place of wanting me to be protected from not wanting to stand out in a way that as women as, sometimes coming from marginalized communities, just speaking up and having an opinion, can have us be perceived as threatening or disruptive when actually, you know, that different perspective is something that it might make you better if you can listen to it, if you can find some, you know, some new wisdom, and, you know, and, and in our, in our, our, respective fields, the intelligence that the business actually needs.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And there's something to be said for, like, just sitting down, listening, taking in the information before you do something with it. Right? Because I think, we tend to see a lot of, like, you hear blah. And it's like, I got my response ready to go, right? It's like, let's pounce on that right away. And it's like, no, no, no, let's, let's listen to the story. And and to be fair, I think it's, it's it's an acquired skill. Right. Listening is a, an acquired skill. I think it comes naturally to some. But to most it's probably very difficult because we want to say... we have opinions on things. Right.

DEANA:
It can be learned and it can be practiced. And, I think that, you know, I've, I mentioned I surround myself myself with left handers, but I also I'm kind of disproportionately surrounded by extroverts. And so as an introvert, I have to practice the, the skills that extroverts just find natural and, you know, don't understand why I didn't speak up earlier in my career or when I thought that speaking up would make me, vulnerable. Well, you've just got to you've just got to assert yourself. You've got to be outgoing, you've got to make those connections. And really, it didn't serve me, or I knew it wouldn't serve me because I hadn't had the practice. And it was only, I think, when I felt called to do my part as a senior engineer, on a team where, you know, we'd had some women rotate in and, and sort of leave and never be heard from again. You know, I was looking around and thinking, wait, why? Why is there only one of us in a room at a time? Why are there only one of 1 or 2 of us at a really bigger room at a time? What am I doing or not doing... to reach out and make those connections and, And let them know that they're not alone and that their opinions do matter. And also connect with them and see if, if they're experiencing something that I experienced sometimes, which is, is, having an opinion heard and then, and not really valued until someone else says the same thing.

ADRIANA:
Right? Yeah. I think that's that's the most aggravating thing ever.

DEANA:
When I started speaking out, because I had a little bit more job security, a little bit more confidence in where I was at my career, when I started, you know, talking about my experiences and saying, hey, yeah, this happens, just happen to anyone else in the room. And to have a bunch of women say, oh, yeah, that's happened to me. That sort of reinforcement told me I'd been quiet too long. I'm not going to do that anymore. So it was a sort of new set of skills that helped me get out of the, timid, sort of natural comfort state of of being quiet and listening and say, okay, this this is where it becomes a superpower. This is where if I don't use my voice, no one else is going to, because no one else in the room, thinks it's safe or no one else in the room has actually experienced it because I'm the only woman, or that I'm the only brown person, or I'm the only.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah.

DEANA:
Yeah, I'm I'm the only one who's five foot tall walking around with a bunch of giants.

ADRIANA:
I feel that so hard. Yeah. I'm like five, three. So. And and it it's sometimes daunting. I don't know if you've ever experienced this, but, like, you know, when you have the floor and you're speaking in an audience, like, not even necessarily like in front of larger audience, but like in a meeting room and all of a sudden, like, people are paying attention to you, I don't know, I sometimes I in my head I'm like, oh shit, they're all listening to what I have to say. Oh crap, what if I say something stupid?

DEANA:
Oh, I mean, it happened earlier in this call. You you were asking a question. I'm like, oh my gosh, I have so many thoughts. I didn't want to get my answer wrong because I feel like this might be the only time they hear me say it. So I want to say it right.

ADRIANA:
Yes.

DEANA:
And I think, I don't know how long you've been doing public speaking, but I've only maybe the last five years. Six, if that. And really, you know, the smaller groups are always where I'm more comfortable. Please don't put me on a big stage. If you do, I'm going to say I'm going to call it out, that I'm nervous and that my heart is beating. Could you come back to me? That's happened. It's on. It's on YouTube somewhere.

ADRIANA:
It's it's daunting. I mean, like, especially when you're not, like, not mentally prepared for for certain interactions. Like, I was... there's a panel I was moderating... moderating a couple of weeks back and one of the, one of the panelists turned to me and like asked a question to me. I'm like, I'm going. And panic. Panic set in. I'm like, I'm I'm going to defer the question to somebody else to answer because I wasn't I wasn't prepared to be called on. And then of course, then for the rest of the evening, I'm like, oh my god, do they think I'm an idiot? Like, did I do something wrong? What if people hate me?

DEANA:
There are definitely there are definitely moments where, where that pressure is, like, physically, it puts that lump in my throat.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah.

DEANA:
I can always hear my voice shaking. And so, you know, let’s take the breath and I realize that, that that's exactly the signal that I need to tell me, keep going. Because this is important.

ADRIANA:
Yes, yes. Yeah, absolutely. And you've touched upon like, two interesting things that, have actually come up in previous conversations on this podcast. One, I had a guest talk about, like reframing nervousness that when you're nervous before giving a talk, it's a sign that you care, that you care enough about what you're what you're doing. And I think that's such a lovely way to reframe it and put it into a different perspective to almost like, calm me down to, I guess it has a soothing effect. And then the other one, is the idea that, you know, As someone who is in a minority group, it's so important, for others who look like us, to see us so it's almost like extra important for us to get past our, our fears and, and, and do this not just for us, but to inspire others. And, the cool story around that one is that the guest who was telling me that I had another guest on, who was inspired by that same woman, who, you know, who said, like, I'm doing this to inspire others. And she was one of the people who was directly impacted by that person. And as she's telling me this, it just sent shivers down my spine. I was like, getting all emotional because I'm like, this stuff matters. We're seeing direct impact of this.

DEANA:
Every time.

DEANA:
And a by the way, some of your guests are like, just phenomenal. And, were you on something with Charity Majors?

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Yeah.

DEANA:
And Kelsey Hightower.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah, I've had Kelsey Hightower on. I've had Charity Majors on. I've done a couple of panels with Charity as well.

DEANA:
When people who... like, thinking of people who, who, whose content randomly came in my feed as I was trying to, you know, get up to speed on this whole new cloud thing. You know, those are some voices. Oh, Liz-Fong Jones. So, just listening to those, people talk about not just what they know, and not in a way that that people can't connect to and access, like the the understanding underneath it, but also saying who they are and that, you know, they didn't get here how you think they did. Our different ways to get in the room. And different strengths that a team needs to really be to really achieve that, that really high goal and different, you know, talents and perspectives and all those things. And Adriana, that's what you inspire me, by the way.

ADRIANA:
Oh, thank you!

DEANA:
Everything. Like sharing the mic sharing the platform is, I think there are folks on your, in your, episode list that I otherwise would never have thought of following or we would have never heard of because they're just like, they're not in my ecosystem. And so it just like, wow, what a great exposure. And like to also say there's not just one way for folks to grow in tech and in, in life and in, in their profession. So there's not one way to succeed and there's not one way to have an impact. Like, not all of us are... not all of us are head of, head of, technology or the, you know, distinguished engineer. But we're all human.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

DEANA:
We all put in the hours and the sweat and we all care that hard.

ADRIANA:
Yes, yes, that that, you know, sums it up so nicely and, you know, like, when I was younger, I used to like, chase titles. And I used to compare myself against people, you know, like a for a while there, my, my husband and I used to work at the same company, and then I left, and he's still there. And people that we knew mutually, he'd be like, oh, listen, this person got promoted to manager. And I remember getting so steamed about it and like, just genuinely pissed. And he's like, I'm not going to tell you anymore because you get pissed off every time. Because I was so jealous. I'm like, why am I not being promoted to manager? And then I came to this realization in my career, when I finally did become a manager, where I'm like, I don't like it. And there are other ways to, like, be a leader. Yeah, without being a manager. I realized, like, for me personally, I love digging into the weeds of tech. And managing people just isn't fun for me. So, like, once I let go of that and just enjoyed, like, gave myself permission to enjoy what I enjoy and and just, like, things took off for me, you know what I mean?

DEANA:
So for me, like all of the things that I liked about being management, being in management in my previous, previous life, it turns out I would have done if they paid me for it or not, and so I could actually keep doing it. I like the mentoring. So, I reach, when I find a group that is looking for mentors and I volunteer. I loved doing that with, a group that's no longer around, Portland women in Tech. And oh man, I miss that community. But. There are other, there are plenty of other communities that are still looking for mentors. I have mentees now that, you know, currently, are currently in a, in an engagement and, and I liked the strategic thinking, the systems thinking. I like thinking of systems of systems. And it turns out I'm going to do that anyway, whether I'm an individual contributor or a manager. And it turns out that I can actually help my leadership in ways that they didn't realize. And I can remind them that, hey, it's not just me, someone who's had a couple of decades in infrastructure that you should listen to. You should also be listening to some of your your junior engineers or your your mid-level engineers who are pretty quiet. They might actually know a little bit about why your systems are working the way they are. And help you make better strategic decisions, or have a better strategic, visibility on what your what you're actually actual risks and, and opportunities might be and you know, again and again it goes back to being able to turn it off and turn on with the invisibility. It's, that's that's one of those areas where a thing about being invisible is you can recognize other folks who are using it as a, as a shield and, who have a lot of, of super power, you know, lurking underneath. And you can help them. And I think that's one of my favorite things about being a mentor is most of my mentees.

DEANA:
I've learned so much more from them than they they I think they could have learned from me because all I do is just is I help them find their own strengths and all I can do is, is, show them that. That, yes, you still have a lot more experience you need to gain. Yes, you're going to get a lot of feedback

DEANA:
that kind of hurts a little bit, hurts your ego a little bit because, you didn't come out perfect. But take those things as as growth. That's why they call them growing pains. And, and it's, it's a great way to be able to, connect those, those, management activities, or the things that I liked about it, into my daily work and, and like, keep recharging me for the, for the spreadsheets. And JSON files, that I, that I have to just deal with and, and that I actually enjoy, you know, for myself. But you know, the thing about management is you've got to be, if you're going to be a manager, you've got to be really understanding of what your organization's strategic direction is, what its vision is, what its values truly are, and decide are you aligned enough to be able to represent that as a manager?
Are you aligned enough to be able to, make the company's priorities your own? In terms of how you speak? And, as an individual contributor, it's so much more liberating.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

DEANA:
You know, I can I can even mentor up, which I think is is just part of part of being an expert in your field is, you can show folks who are, you know, miles above your pay grade how to, how to do a new thing and, how to create some value.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. And I think you make such an, an important point when it comes to mentoring, that I think, if you're not learning anything from your mentees, then I think you're doing it wrong. Because honestly, like, coming with this attitude of like, I am the authority on all the things and you shall listen to me like...

DEANA:
Also the same thing you did, though, too, about the unfairness of how management, how promotions were handed out. And by the way, I also, it was completely obfuscated to me early in my career that there was another way to get promoted without going into management.

ADRIANA:
Yes, exactly. Me too.

DEANA:
Right. And not just promoted but, compensated.

ADRIANA:
Exactly.

DEANA:
Enrich. Like we grow in different ways. Like I, I didn't talk like this. I wouldn't have been able to talk like this had I stayed in management because I could have only spoken what I was allowed to speak. Whereas now I the views and opinions that I express are my own.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's a different vibe. I, I remember my, at my last management position, my, my boss was trying to groom me for director position and he said something which, which you touched upon, which is you're going to have to put your personal goals aside and, and really focus on the company goals and, like, I'm not ready for that. It's not to say, like, you know, when you're working, of course, you like, you’re being... your paycheck comes from somewhere. It doesn't mean like, screw the company goals. I don't care. That's not it at all. But I think a different level, of like, really putting the company needs above your own professional needs. And when you're in these higher positions. And for me, I think it takes a bigger mental load as well. Like, it's big mental toll.

DEANA:
Oh, ego, too.

ADRIANA:
Okay. Yeah.

DEANA:
I think the thing that, that newer software engineers and and technologists, of all kinds. Really just anyone who kind of comes in from their, their college degree into their tech role, has in common is they're used to excelling. Probably. They’re at the top of their class up until K through 12 or I, I don't know how it is in Canada.

ADRIANA:
But yeah same same same.

DEANA:
Yeah. So so then like you, you're, you're a freshman in college and that's probably the first time in a long time that you're oh among all-stars. Oh no. It's going to be harder to stand out as the top 10% of the class, top 3% of the class. Because now these are the smartest people I've ever had in, all in one place. And so then maybe you get a little more humility and you've got a few years to build that back up. And if you're an extrovert, even easier, or if, if you're not, then you, you sort of lag further and further behind. I never thought I'd be in tech when I, I started out electrical engineering and I, for lack of better words, washed out. I it didn't didn't fit, at the time, at the time. But I, I took a different fork where I thought, okay, well, here's where I can start kind of building some value and it's fine, but everything that every next role just kept bringing me back and bringing that, that confidence back. But it brought me back to that feeling of, oh, yeah, this is what it's like to be around smart people again. And that okay. So I shouldn't say that with, with too much humor because and that was actually my attitude. I really enjoyed judging people for not being as smart as me, when really we're all smart at something. And when you're told you need to be smart about this in this way, and that's the only way to do it. You believe them when they tell you you're not smart.

So for anyone who thinks, I could never write code, I could never, administer that cluster. I could never do FinOps. Try it. You might actually have a strength that you haven't. You know, that you haven't actually discovered in yourself. And that's when, you know, that's when you can unlock it. And that's when you can say, okay, it's not about the smart people and the not smart people. It is really about people showing up with the strengths that they have got and the willingness to grow and have each other's backs. And that's how you build teams, that's how you make sustainable operations. That's how organizations become resilient. And, you know, we keep learning from each other. I learn so much from you, I really do.

ADRIANA:
Oh, thank you.

DEANA:
OTel stuff. Not in the observability space, but in the way that all data is in some way. You can use it as telemetry. To just tell you, like, is this the right signal? I am the bounds. I can't see my boundaries. This helps me understand what what the the bottom and the top looks like. And you know, whether or not I'm moving in the direction that I intended to. And so same thing with FinOps data, which is basically cloud cost data. It's just data analysis. It's just... it's a lot. It's coming at you fast. So you've got to be able to to sometimes listen to things at double speed. But you're not, like, it's it's not anything new. It's not more than, than, the thing that you're just willing to show up and care about, like, if that's the thing you care about, if observability is the thing you care about, if security is the thing you care about, you know, learn how to do it right, learn how other people do it differently from you.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's, you know, you've touched upon so many really cool and important points. I think first of all, I, as you said, like you coming, coming from like, high school and being the smartest person in your high school and then kind of coming back to reality when you're surrounded by all these other people in university who are like, oh, damn, that person's way smarter than me. It's it's such a humbling experience. I think it's an important experience. And I think for me, one of the biggest lessons was learning that, it's okay to not be the smartest person in the room. In fact, I never want to be, because I always want to keep learning. And then the other thing that I thought of, too is, you know, one of the struggles I had when I entered the workforce was, I was a great student, but I was such a shitty employee because I didn't know... it's a different skill set to be an employee versus a student. Right? Like, as an employee, there are expectations of being you know, more of a self-starter. And as a student, especially the unfortunately, I don't think that the education system is really geared towards independent thinking. And so it becomes a shock when you enter the workforce because it's like, tell me what I need to do, or, you know, like, I, I don't know, I just everything was a different vibe.

And I sucked at it. And once I, once I learned how to navigate the workforce, and I wish, I wish there were more opportunities for people to navigate the workforce before they graduate from high school or university or whatever. Then it became a lot better, but it was jarring for me. I sucked at it.

DEANA:
Yeah, I think that's where, and it's, again, easier, I think, for extroverts to find other folks to give you that feedback of, like, is this normal? Like, is it okay that it that I had to build my own dev environment and my own sandbox and without any like, parameters or got guardrail like, is that okay, let's or should I, you know, say something and try to make it better for the next one who comes in. You know, there's going to be someone... I'm going to get experience. I'm going to learn how to use these tools quickly and, and tear them down, rebuild them, you know, with with just the muscle memory in my in my finger knuckles and but oh, maybe I should document this somewhere and or correct the existing document and say, actually, the next person who does this is going to have to at least know to ask these questions before they say, oh, that's the that's the one. That's the compressed file that well, that's going to work for me.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. No. Yeah, I, I feel ya. I do want to pivot to one more topic. Before we wrap up, because we are coming up on time. But you've mentioned, FinOps a couple of times, and for those, in our audience who aren't familiar with shin ops, can you give like, a brief overview and also how you got into it?

DEANA:
Oh. So, I think I got into it. Well, I’ll explain what it is first, and, and, it is commonly described, as financial operations, and that's actually not completely accurate. FinOps, if it's used by a person in finance and accounting, is exactly that, financial operations. Maybe it's reporting, maybe it's journal entries, maybe it's something in the finance processes. It's not actually what Cloud FinOps It's it's more of a, a portmanteau of the terms finance, financial management, and DevOps. So taking sort of the cultural principles of, of that collaboration and that mutual accountability, from, from more technical spaces into this, business management of technology space. That's what FinOps is. And some companies use it to just control their, their cloud spend. Just make sure that no one's spinning up gigantic clusters of very expensive instance types. And some people use it as a telemetry to say, this is, this is a really efficient, stack. And I need to scale that. And, you know, I need to invest in this area because it's actually it's actually creating, a return, creating value for, you know, my, my team or my, my organization. So, so it's, and like I said, it's it's a lot like observability in that, you know, we're building intelligence with data, and we're, we're getting data that we've had, but organizing it and making it accessible, and it's really just telling us what we do, what the impacts of our engineering decisions are, and how that, you know, how that costs more money.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

DEANA:
Or how like, or how our, maybe our, our, SAS contracts are like are, are performing.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. And you know, it's, it's something so important to take into account because I think. You know, once a lot of organizations move to the cloud, especially if you're not, you know, if, if you are just a, a consumer of the service and not the one paying for the bill, it's easy to just, like, magically provision resources and just, you know, like the Cloud Fairy brought me this Kubernetes cluster. But there's a, until, like, you are staring at a massive, like, AWS or GKE bill, you're like, oh, shit. Like, I've gotten dinged even, like, on my personal, GKE account where, I had a an instance where I had a Kubernetes cluster that had, like, logging and monitoring enabled because that's enabled by default. Well, guess what? That ate up some massive, massive cloud costs. And and so now you're like, where do I where is the switch to turn this stuff off so that it doesn't, you know, so, so that it doesn't eat up my costs.

DEANA:
So that's where you if you bring in your, your FP&A, or your finance partner, in, or your, your, assistant comptroller in and say, say, well, what happened? What went wrong? I don't know, there was a $50,000 spike. And you know, that that would have bought me my next car. But, you know, fix it. With someone in FinOps who has, sort of access to, engineering terms and understanding of who your cloud vendors are to be able to say, okay, here's what happened on this workload, because of these events and because of these retention policies and because of these autoscaling thresholds, you left something running. You left the lights on, you left the bathtub flowing.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah.

DEANA:
Twenty simple things that can be proactive and that we can actually govern through automation. We can say, by the way, this open faucet has a time to live. This sandbox account is really important. We need to be able to allow a $50,000 spike, maybe, for about five minutes.

ADRIANA:
Right.

DEANA:
You know, to make sure that those guardrails are in place. If your organization doesn't have someone to go through and say, okay, I'm, I'm going to invest in, in this technology. And these consultants say that it's going to give me this much ROI. I need someone inside who's going to actually keep an eye on it. How are you observing it? What monitoring are you putting in place? What signals can you look for? Right. That's not rocket science. It's just, it's just, it can be a lot. And I promise you, there are a lot of quiet people who are quietly doing other work who would actually really excel in something like FinOps. And also a lot of automation that can be put in place where I think engineers who do the IAC, like, get really excited about writing those, policies and putting those, those different guardrails right into the pipeline to say, yeah, the CI/CD to say, okay, I'm not going to let, you know, the manager speaking. I'm not going to let that happen. Well, here's actually how the code will prevent that from ever happening. And... when you have like a, an understanding of what the exception process is, then, like, everybody can, can, gain that intelligence from having the experience and having all that context. It's a tough thing though, because, you know, you you don't always know why policies exist.

ADRIANA:
And yeah.

DEANA:
If I know engineers, they want to just know how to get around them.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. And you touched upon a really important point because I think, it's this lack of understanding of why the policies exist, pisses engineering... engineers off. And as you said, try to, it causes them to try to get around it. And I think understanding where these policies come from, makes a huge difference. And I think working with engineers to craft the policies, I think goes a long way as well, because then it's like, okay, I had a hand in this, I, and I think it brings that extra level of empathy too, right?

DEANA:
Oh yeah. Yeah. And collaboration really is what keeps people happy in their jobs, I think. That's when you realize, oh you know, I did a thing and, and I want to, I want to work with that person again. Like I think that's the thing that makes, makes some of our work less boring. You know just just less isolated.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. This has been really great. Before we wrap up, do you have any final, parting words of wisdom?

DEANA:
I think I just want to acknowledge that it's been a tough time, that we need a lot of compassion to keep, showing up for people we've never. We've probably never worked with before. Never. Interacted with to just know that that, if you were living in a place where there are floods, or if you're, if you're in an industry or, or. Well, it's a tough time to be in tech, where you have a little less job security than you did, and than you thought you would this year. You know, just having that compassion is something that, it's going to be helpful to just remind ourselves who, to know that. The person who is probably giving you the most friction might have just had the worst day after a lot of bad days. And, and maybe be curious about that.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

DEANA:
That you can keep showing up for them and, and keep seeing how maybe you're the person who can, can turn it around for them. And, or maybe that person's experience is something that can turn it around for you. I, I feel like I keep getting reminders of that. Really, every day. And, I didn't know I was going to say that, but that's the kind of week it's been.

ADRIANA:
I feel ya. And, you know, thank you so much for calling that out, because I think it's it's really important to put stuff into perspective. Tech times are definitely strange these days. And having that little bit of extra empathy goes a long way. So thank you so much. And thank you so much, Deana, for geeking out with me today.

ADRIANA:
Y'all, don't forget to subscribe and be sure to check the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media. Until next time...

DEANA:
Peace out and geek out!

The One Where We Geek Out on Argo Project with Lisa-Marie Namphy

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Lisa-Marie Namphy, Adriana Villela) — Tue, 4 Nov 2025 05:00:00 +0000

Key takeaways:

An open source project can only succeed if it has not only contributors and maintainers, but also users of the project.
Your open source project is really as good as the docs are.
It can be challenging for companies to commit to and adopt open source projects because they don't know if the project will be long enough.
Large organizations or startups looking to scale look for paid support from open source projects that they use, if it ends up becoming a mission-critical part of their development and/or operations.
If there's an open source project you love, show some love to the open source developers by donating to the project, because if they can't pay the bills, they can't maintain the project.
When Lisa was in university, girls weren't encouraged to go into tech, and it resulted in her being an English major, even though she was better at STEM subjects.
End users are just as important as the folks working on open source projects.
Even if you don't get accepted to KubeCon, there are tons of other conferences and meetups, both part of the CNCF and outside of the CNCF, that you can attend, including Kubernetes Community Days (KCDs).
KubeCrash is an online conference that, among other things, prides itself on featuring first-time speakers.
If you want to get into public speaking and want to build up your confidence, panels are a great way to get started.

About our guest:

Lisa-Marie Namphy is a developer community architect, and CNCF Ambassador with 20+ years in cloud native software. Currently, Lisa is Director, DevRel at Intuit. Lisa is also runs the Cloud Native Silicon Valley User Group. Lisa is an advocate and frequent speaker for DEl initiatives and open source technology, a writer, an avid sports fan, and loves wine and dogs.

Find our guest on:

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show notes:

Transcript:
ADRIANA:
Hey everyone, welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast in which we dive into the career journeys of some of the amazing humans in tech and geek out on topics like software development, DevOps, observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And geeking out with me today, I have the awesome Lisa-Marie Namphy. Welcome.

LISA-MARIE:
Hi! Thanks for having me.

ADRIANA:
Super excited to have you on. And where are you calling from today?

LISA-MARIE:
California. I am in the Silicon Valley. So our our Intuit office is in Mountain View, that's the one that I work out of. So, but I'm actually one of the rare, Bay Area natives. My mom is a professor at Stanford, so I literally grew up here, and I'm still here. So that's where I'm coming to you from today.

ADRIANA:
Oh, that's so cool. And you as as we record this, we are, are we in the middle of or finishing up KCD Bay Area?

LISA-MARIE:
We just finished. We just, I say we just aired it, but it was actually live, at the Computer History Museum last Tuesday, so, that would have been September 9th. And, the Computer History Museum is a fantastic place. If anyone's visiting the Bay Area. It's, you know, it has incredible history to go through. I think a couple of the speakers that may be on stage with us might end up on the walls of that building someday. It was also where the CNCF started. But there were some weird CNCF history, like they signed the, the charter. I don't know what they call it.

ADRIANA:
WHAT?!

LISA-MARIE:
Something happened in that building. So it was actually kind of really cool because Google, you know, donated Kubernetes and Google's right there also. That's practically on the Google campus. And so all of that happened there. And so it's a historic building. And it's, you know, right next to our office also. So very convenient. And I love that we're on Geeking Out here, because I think, you know, I've probably been a geek since childhood, given where I grew up, sort of in the water we drink. So, I'm, I'm your resident community geek from the Bay Area.

ADRIANA:
Oh, my God, that is like the nerdiest location ever. And I love it so much. Oh, that that must have been so fun to, to host the event in that venue.

LISA-MARIE:
Yeah, it really was fun. And it was a it was a really fun, you know, place to grow up as well because it was, you know, kind of the origin of open source, really. I mean, I remember in high school, you know, hacking away with, with my buddies just, you know, building whatever software application we thought was cool and that we thought we needed because a lot of stuff didn't exist back then and then, you know, was like, oh, this is. This is. Cool. So, you know, maybe other people would want it too. And, you know, you just give it out there and for free. This was like before the greed came in. And that was. That's kind of in our DNA. And so I've been, you know, really kind of at that, that open source and community mindset, my whole career, even though, you know, I didn't come at it. We can talk later, maybe, about. Career journeys and things like that.

So back to KCD. Yeah. It was amazing. Solomon Hykes keynoted for us, which was awesome. Jonathan Bryce kicked it off. He's, the new executive director of the CNCF. But, Jonathan, I go way back to his OpenStack days. He was the kind of founder of the OpenStack Foundation with Mark Collier. And, I ran the first ever like the OpenStack user group. We we started it here and built it out. And that was kind of the original, the user group that has now become the sort of Kubernetes and cloud native user group that I run out here. So for for 10 of those 15 years, it was the OpenStack user group. So it's, it's a nice, there's a lot of synergy between the two communities. And it's amazing that Jonathan is now, running the the CNCF with Chris Aniszczyk . And so kind of all my worlds colliding. And it was really fun to have Jonathan come out to the Bay Area and kick off the event as well.

ADRIANA:
Oh, cool. That's awesome. And is is that the first time that there's been a KCD Bay Area or.

LISA-MARIE:
Yeah, yeah, that was there's only four in the United States. Five in North America because there was one in, there's one in Guadalajara, or maybe it was Mexico City this year. There's one in Mexico and, four in the US. The this week is Washington DC. I think it's like maybe it's today actually possibly. Today or tomorrow, which so 16th or 17th for those watching this later. And there was one in Austin. I had the pleasure of emceeing that one, and one in New York City. So...

ADRIANA:
Oh yeah, that's right, that's right.

LISA-MARIE:
Yeah. And hopefully next year, one in Toronto, maybe.

ADRIANA:
Fingers crossed! We will definitely. By the time this comes out, we will know one way or another and we can put that in the show notes for anyone who's curious.

LISA-MARIE:
Yeah, I mean, you deserve it. Toronto is such a great, tech community, great tech center. We ran a couple meetups in our Toronto office last summer as part of Toronto Tech Week. Which is really, really cool. We did an open source. I mean, up there that you came and spoke at.

ADRIANA:
I did!

LISA-MARIE:
Some other awesome community members, and I believe in December, I think the first week of December first or second, we are going to host the CNCF user group again, and I will expect to see you there, at our office, for the holiday edition of the Kubernetes and cloud native, not just Toronto. I think Archy, I think folks from all over Canada, are going to bring their user groups, and I will fly up and we'll have some fun.

ADRIANA:
Ooh, exciting. Yeah. It was so great to see you too for that for Toronto Tech Week, which, you know, I've, I've been living in Toronto since I came here for university. So in 1997 is when, when I moved here and I didn't even know that Toronto Tech Week was a thing until I got to the invite to do the panel to be a moderator for this panel at Toronto Tech Week. So it was it was lots of fun. And, I hope to participate in that again next year in some form or another.

LISA-MARIE:
Yeah, I didn't know it was a thing either. I think it's a really growing, community. Toronto's growing so much. As you’ve observed, since you were there for university. Yeah. It's. It's a wonderful city. Fantastic city. Granted, I've never been there in the winter.

ADRIANA:
It’s hit and miss, it's hit and miss, this winter was cold, but our winters of late, our our global warming winters have been kind of oscillating between below freezing one day and above freezing the next. And so it's like all the snow will fall. And then the next day it'll like, all melt. So it's like you never know what you're going to get.

LISA-MARIE:
Sounds like slush.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, sounds like slush. We’re definitely... Like, we're on the... because we're we're on the other side of the lake. Compared to like Buffalo, right. Buffalo is known for getting all the snow and they get the lake effect. We're like the the anti Buffalo. Like, lake effect for us means like, we don't get that dumping of snow. So the city itself... like, surrounding areas will get tons of snow. But the city itself, like it's it takes a lot for it to like, for us to get some good snow in Toronto these days because of, you know, all the concrete and all that stuff. So yes. So it'll be it'll be interesting to see when you're here. What what version of Toronto you'll get.

LISA-MARIE:
Yeah. Well I, I love I love Toronto really because of the people. It's a beautiful city. The people are great. They're really great. I there was so much enthusiasm at that meetup. We had. All week. We had activities every single night. And they were very different. We hosted, Monday, Monday Girl Monday, something that, it was a women's group that came of first night and it was fantastic. Just really amazing energy. And, and people were like, oh, you know, I didn't know Intuit was super into open source. And I'm like, well, yeah, we are. We can talk about that later too, but.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

LISA-MARIE:
See these guys?

ADRIANA:
That's right, I’ve got mine!

LISA-MARIE:
Yes! So cool! Yeah. So yeah. And it's been consuming open source of course, but also producing incredible open source projects and donating them, including the Argo project to, to the CNCF, and we still, you know, maintain it and we, you know, we. We, we need these like, people don't really realize... So Intuit, for those of you that are American on the call, you probably already know Intuit. And maybe you use it to do your taxes or to balance your books. If you're in a small business. But for the global folks, Intuit has over 100 million customers, and the brands are TurboTax, QuickBooks, Credit Karma, and MailChimp. And most of the customers have been, you know, small and medium businesses. So we close the books for and do the balance sheets for really a large majority of the small businesses in the United States, and now more medium sized businesses. So it's really important technology. And it runs on Kubernetes. This is what yeah, this is what maybe a lot of people don't realize. Kubernetes. And then we created Argo because we needed, you know, sort of a GitOps for Kubernetes. We needed things to be a little bit easier. We've also created a lot of cool things for our platform. Now, Kubernetes, as you know, is hard. Kubernetes out of the box is not easy. So every company, probably does something, you know, with their platform to make things a little bit easier. And actually, we just spoke at KCD last Tuesday about some of the things that we built for the platform just, around Kubernetes that, you know, we thought, well, maybe could be useful for other people. But Argo was one of the, the main things that was developed by Pratik and Ed Lee and Saradhi, who was my original manager at Intuit.

And and then, you know, they, they need it. We still run on Argo. Argo is still extremely important. And things like Argo Promotions, the number one asked for feature, is something that we built for the last cycle because we needed it, and so does everybody else. So we do, and like, this guy was when Argo graduated, this was Detroit.

ADRIANA:
And for for reference, for our our listeners only. You're holding up the the Argo.

LISA-MARIE:
Oh, I didn't realize...

ADRIANA:
We have we have video and and audio. So...

LISA-MARIE:
I am holding up the Argo mascot. We can argue it might be the cutest, most lovable mascot in cloud native.

ADRIANA:
I mean, I am. I am still vying for a women's fitted ArgoCD t-shirt, because the ones that keep getting sent to me are not fitted. And I want a fitted women's ArgoCD t-shirt.

LISA-MARIE:
What's your size?

ADRIANA:
I'm extra small.

LISA-MARIE:
Okay. All right. That I will dig.

ADRIANA:
I proudly I would proudly wear because I agree with you. It is the cutest mascot of all of the the CNCF. Sorry, not sorry.

LISA-MARIE:
Yeah. No, I mean, for Salt Lake City, we made a really cool snowy version of the shirt. I know we did an extra small, I think about... I’ve given one of my niece, because they were really small. So I will I will look and see what we still have in our closet, but we will probably be doing, more things. We have a super special version of of Argo and Numi. We can talk about this later, but, from the same people that brought you Argo, this is sort of the next greatest open source, project coming out. And so will be, both of these two. I am now still holding up, plushies of of an orange octopus and a polar bear. We will have versions of both of them at KubeCon in Atlanta. And Argo is going to be dressed in quite the outfit.

ADRIANA:
Oh, my!

LISA-MARIE:
I’m not sure if I can give the big reveal, but, let's just say, since KubeCon is a week after Halloween, two weeks after Halloween, and a week before a really big movie is about to come out, we may just have something really special. This one might be wearing a black hat. Might be riding a broom. Maybe. We'll see.

ADRIANA:
Oh, my God, I'm excited. I can't wait to, you know, that'll be great.

LISA-MARIE:
It'll be a fun, fun thing this year. But anyway, yeah, we we create this technology because we need to use it. We need our, you know, we need our our products to run on it. And because of that, we got end user of the year award twice from the CNCF at KubeCon in 2019 and 2022. So, we take our end user-ness very seriously and into it. And, we do contribute back a lot. Also to, GraphQL, part of that foundation, big Istio users. So, lots of stuff, that I know you're very familiar with, that powers our, our tech platform and our, our product line. And then we run a lot of meetups and, those are all open source meetups. We like to feature end users, but we also like to feature community members from cloud native community. So we do have a quarterly in Mountain View for any of those around. And we're going to try to start doing them quarterly in the Toronto and San Diego offices as well. So our next one will have just happened before this airs, October 20th. But in Toronto it's the first week of December. So...

ADRIANA:
Amazing. Yeah, I can't wait. And I should mention also, for Canadian folks like, we use we use TurboTax as well. I use, I use the online version. I can't use the desktop version because I'm on a Mac, so I only use the online version, which honestly, I love because I hate installing extra crap on my machine anyway. So...

LISA-MARIE:
Yeah, I think we have a desktop version for the Mac, but the online version is better. That's where you're going to get a lot of the AI stuff. Yeah. A lot of those done for your experiences. And they're getting better every version. So, I think I would say stick with, you know.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

LISA-MARIE:
So your, your cloud native original here.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, it's super cool. And it, I think when, when, we were, when we met up at Toronto Tech Week. I think one of the comments that you made when, when you were, when you opened up, the, the event that I was at, was the the fact that not a lot of people realize that Intuit is the creator of ArgoCD, which is wild. Like, that's such a little known fact. I guess in some circles, for me, I'm like, of course it is. Yeah.

LISA-MARIE:
Yeah it is. And and Argo Workflows and Rollouts and Events, but, yeah. Argo CD, it was, so the company was called Applatix that Intuit acquired. And that's where Pratik, Ed, Saradhi, and Luca came from. And that was in the early days, I believe it was just workflows at the time. And then once they came into Intuit and they built ArgoCD, at that point, then they realized they needed to, you know, get more community help and more community adoption, and not just from users and contributors, but also from vendors that were going to build, companies around this. And that's really what it takes to make an open source project succeed. You can do it other ways. But if you for those of you out there who have your open source projects and you're thinking about how to keep them sustainable and viable for many, many years, and go from, you know, an idea in someone's head to now, the third most popular for third largest project in the in the CNCF, you really need a community to do that. And and not just a community of developers and maintainers, because those folks can change companies, leave jobs. You know, you can't guarantee that. You can't always count on it. So once you bring in the vendors and in our case, it was, RedHat, Akuity and CodeFresh, at the time, now, Octopus Deploy. And if it wasn't for them, they probably, you know, we wouldn't have necessarily we wouldn't have been ready to donate Argo to the CNCF, because we wouldn't have known for sure that it would be, sustainable. And and because we needed it to be, you know, we it's, you know, mission critical for us. So that was kind of the thinking and, and I thought Pratik’s timing was really good.

They had over 500 customers using it. They had the four... the three vendors and us, really making a like, I mean, obviously Red Hat could have succeeded, but really with CodeFresh and Akuity, you know, they were building their companies around, around it. So it it doesn't always bother me that other people, that people think that maybe one of those brands started it because they, they have to market it. They've spent a lot of time and investment in getting that word out there. And that's great. I mean, it's great for us. It's great for Argo. And it's it's great to keep the project going. So it's, you know, it's something that we're super proud of and we. We take a lot of pride in it. And sometimes our, you know, folks internally are like, how come nobody knows that we that we did it. And we want, you know, we. Want to be known as a cool tech brand and as a very, you know, a cool open source player and contributor. So we would love people to know that. And obviously Argo is is an amazing project and a super special, project that we're going to keep, contributing to. So we have a lot of pride and we'd love people to know it, but, you know, it's fine. We had Dan Garfield from Octopus Deploy on stage talking about Argo Promotions, at KCD and yeah, I probably he didn't mention Intuit, so I did, when I introduced him. By the way, this is a feature that, you know, that came out of, of our team, but, it's it's all community. And, you know, I wouldn't be a good CNCF Ambassador, Kubernetes Ambassador if I was, you know... it's a friendly competition, but it's we are really all in this together with community, and we don't sell anything. So, you know, we're we're truly end users.

We I mean, we sell TurboTax and QuickBooks, but we don't sell anything having to do with Argo or Kubernetes. So, we don't, you know, we don't have to, to do that the way other companies do. So it's one big happy family, right?

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Yeah, I love that. And I think you touched on something really important, which I think is part of the recipe for a successful open source project, which is, it's not just supported by one company. Right. Like, you know, the success of Kubernetes, the success of OpenTelemetry, it's not just like, it's because there are so many companies that are officially backing and dedicating people, to, participating, developing, working on, on these products and in, in various aspects. Right? It's not it's not just the code. It's it's the release notes. It's, you know, the blog post, like there's so much, so much going on. I think that's part of the, like, one of the reasons why OpenTelemetry is so successful. Like, I always tell people, like, on a day to day basis, I'm working with a bunch of competitors, but I don't see them as competitors. They're all friends. Right. And that's that's I think it's so great that you guys did that as, as well, like with Argo, making sure that it's like you're not the only ones propping it. There's, there's other backing as well.

LISA-MARIE:
Yeah, definitely. And so any names that... I keep saying Argo’s the third most popular project. You named the first two Kubernetes and OpenTelemetry. And but there's a lot of smaller projects and as you said, there's lots of ways to contribute. And people think, oh, well, you know, I need to write code. I need to, you know, be a maintainer... docs. I mean, I'm always lobbying for, you know, if you if you have a passion for writing, especially writing English language and not just code, you know, people seem to have this notion that AI is going to be able to write all the docs. And...

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

LISA-MARIE:
That's not the reality at the moment. We will get there, but it's not there right now.

ADRIANA:
Not right now, no.

LISA-MARIE:
You need help. And you know your open source project is really only as good as the docs are. I mean, those of us in DevRel, I would say, your docs team, that's your original DevRel. That was our case at Cockroach. We had phenomenal docs. And you know, I encourage all open source projects to really think that through from the beginning. And, you know, that's that's going to help a lot. But people, when they look at adopting open source technologies, especially something that hasn't been given to a foundation yet, that you're not really sure. Is that going to be updated? Is it going to be around, you know, for is, is it going to outlive what you need it to? You know, if you need it for four years, are those maintainers going to keep maintaining it for four years? Is there going to be, you know, new releases of it? Is it going to stay cutting edge? So it's really hard, you know, hard for companies like us. Like we evaluate a lot of open source technology. And that's the question we ask. You know, how how viable is this community, how sustainable is this product going to be? And, because the last thing you want is, you know, you're making all your own updates and you're basically doing everything for the for the product, and you're hoping it gets out there into, you know, so you don't have to like, fork the whole thing. And but it's a problem. So for those of you out there also, you know, trying to figure out how you're going to play in this open source community or develop your own, your own technology, just know, I mean, that's what companies are really thinking about before they adopt. So the more community you have, the more diverse your user group is, the more companies you get involved. And if you get lucky and you get a vendor in who's going to, you know, really, bet their business on your project, then that's a good recipe for success.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, absolutely. And I and I think you touched on, on a really important point too, like when you, you know, I think a lot of startups, heavily rely on, on open source because it's like, hey, it's it's free, available... yay. I don't have to pay for this, but then you get to large enterprises, or even those, those, those startups start to scale and you need something a little bit more, you know, a little bit more beefy, or you need to, you need you need a guarantee. It's not so much a beefiness. You need a guarantee of reliability. Right. And I remember in my banking days, it kind of broke my brain initially when, when the bank I was working at was, was like, well, we don't really, we're, we're a little bit hesitant about working with open source, because we need, we want to pay somebody for support.

So unless there's like some support contract wrapped around that open source offering, then it's too much of a risk, right? Especially when you have critical applications, critical services running that rely on these tools. How do you ensure that when shit hits the fan, there is going to be, you know, a timely resolution, right? Because like your Oracle database, I'm dating myself, spent many years of my career doing Oracle stuff. When your Oracle database starts crapping out, you can call, you know, the Oracle support team, and they'll get on the phone with you in the middle of the night to try to resolve your issues. So do you have that guarantee when you're working with with open source software? Right.

LISA-MARIE:
Yeah, it's it's really true. And, you know, if it's a really small project, I always try to encourage people, you know, give them some love, give them some money. If you're using this project, there's a way to donate to the maintainers, and the team developing, because if if they can't pay the bills, they're going to, you know, have to get a full time job that they're working around the clock at, and they're not going to be able to maintain that, technology. So, we always try to give a little love back if we are using a project and it's like, you know, a guy and his dog in his garage, you know, or a woman and and her dog, I was going to say cat, but I’m a dog person, so if it was in my garage, it was a dog. Yeah. And and then, you know, you have to support that if you can. And so it's like, you know, consider like a Go Fund Me or something like that to, to really help. And your Oracle days also brought up... I started my tech career, one of my early jobs out of college, actually spent over five years at Oracle. Way back in the ‘90s. So I yes, that was, that was early stages in my career. I had actually worked for a Posix certification company before that. So I did geek out... I mean, if you want to talk about geekiness, Posix, Posix certifications.

ADRIANA:
Oh, damn...

LISA-MARIE:
And I was like, trying to teach myself Linux at the time, and but it was really cool technology. And we had, you know, back in the day, if you wanted to sell to the government, you had to have Posix certifications, like, you know, it was a really important thing. And so we would have technology in there, not just software, but hardware that we were certifying. Like we had the original Sun pizza boxes in there. We had IBM mainframes, we had all this technology, and they would bolt it to the floor of our office so somebody couldn't walk out with it, because it hadn't even been released yet. And we test it. And we do. You know, we did a couple hundred Posix certifications a year, and then, you know, you'd get your certification and, you know, Microsoft would run off with their technology and, and they'd be able to sell it. So that was kind of how I, right out of college, got into tech because I was an English major, which probably came out of the fact that my mom was an English professor here at Stanford. And it was a little bit of a default. And I went to college back in the dark ages when, you know, my Jesuit advisors were not encouraging women to go into the math and sciences field, even though my math SAT scores were twice like my English scores were. But, you know, they were like, you want to go into the School of Nursing? School of Education. What do you want to do? I was just like....

ADRIANA:
HOW?

LISA-MARIE:
Yeah. Yeah. It was like that. So, I didn't have enough, like role models or examples at the time, even though I grew up here, and we were just like, such geeks. But you know, it was like you get influenced by your advisors and...

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah...

LISA-MARIE:
That was what they knew, I guess. And it wasn't until my senior year that one of my roommates was a math major, and I was like, neat. We get to do that? What are you talking about? And I was taking electives. I was like, tutoring the hockey team in calculus, even though I wasn’t taking calculus. But I was taking astronomy and all kinds of.

ADRIANA:
WHAT?

LISA-MARIE:
Love it. I still love that stuff.

ADRIANA:
Oh my God, I love astronomy. I will nerd out with you on that any time.

LISA-MARIE:
Yes, 100%. Oh my gosh. When we get to Toronto, we're assuming.

ADRIANA:
Okay, okay. Yes.

LISA-MARIE:
The first thing I do when I, when I get somewhere, I orient myself like, okay, where are all my friends?

ADRIANA:
Oh my God.

LISA-MARIE:
Because you can rely on that. The planets. The moon. Stars kind of, you know, you know where they are and they're just they're there for you and yeah. Love it, love it. Though a Scorpio is one of my favorite constellations. And so this is his time of year. And he's he's looking great up there in the sky from where I live. So every, every day I just ground myself. I'm like, hey, Scorp, what’s going on?

ADRIANA:
Awww....for me, it's always like, in the winter, looking up at Orion. It's like that sense of comfort.

LISA-MARIE:
Yeah, I'm a Libra, but that's not an interesting constellation. Just the stars are kind of boring the way they are. I just love Scorpio. And that fantastic tail. Orion is is an awesome one too, and Cassiopeia is probably another one of my favorites.

ADRIANA:
Totally, totally.

LISA-MARIE:
Cool that W and it's just right there. I totally love it.

ADRIANA:
Awww, I love finding a fellow astronomy nerd. That's great.

LISA-MARIE:
Totally. Totally. So I wish, I wish I had gone into that field. I should have been a rocket scientist at NASA. You know, NASA's like literally there. We started OpenStack at NASA. And I was running meetups right there. And, but I, you know, and I would go and geek out with the space, the space portal guys, on a Friday afternoon, we would bring a bottle of wine and go up there on the base. And, you know, I'd find out all the things going on. So I absolutely love that. I should have done it. So if you're listening to this and you're a young woman and you're choosing your career, go for what you love, go for your passion. I came back into tech through this roundabout way. And, you know, nothing like taking Pascal courses at a community college and, you know, night school to try to, like, figure out, to learn PL/SQL, to understand the Oracle database.

ADRIANA:
PL/SQL was my buddy for years. It was like a love hate relationship with it.

LISA-MARIE:
Yes, yes. Well, SQL's come a long way. My last role before, Intuit I was at Cockroach, Cockroach DB. Learned all about distributed SQL and that was some really cool stuff. It’s an amazing architecture. And once you kind of get into it, especially if you're a SQL and a relational database person, and then, you know, you look at distributed SQL and it's like, as the friend Jim Walker used to say, you can't unsee it. Once you see it, can’t unsee it. It's just a really special thing that makes you be able to do incredible use cases, you know, Mongo and stuff and, you know, just the, the scalability and reliability is just, you know, it's unmatched. So I really had a lot of fun there at that company for three years. Getting to chat. You know, they have an open source version as well. And so building community there, they had fantastic docs. I'm sure they still do. Just the one of the best examples I've seen of a really amazing, docs and education team. But yeah, that's really, really, really fun technology and, you know, but then to get the opportunity to actually work for an end user, I mean, my, my whole community career has been pushing end user stories out there and telling the stories that, you know, people come from the technology side, like, oh, I'm a Kubernetes maintainer. I'm, you know, I'm geeking out at the new feature in Argo.

And it's like, well, why don't we talk to the people that are actually using this? Why don't we let, like, people tell their story? Let's talk to even the architects and, you know, who is actually the operators, right? Let's not forget about them. And when we start in this huge technology, OpenStack did the same thing. And Kubernetes, you know, we tend to start from the inside out. And when I was running the OpenStack meetup, you know, we'd always have the project maintainers come and talk about, you know, whether it was project Ironic or Nova or Neutron or whatever the projects were. And after a while I'm like, I don't think the people who are building and using this stuff really need to know what the next feature in Neutron is. Like, you know, sometimes, because people in the Bay area tend to roll our own, you know, “vanilla Kubernetes”, they call it now because. That just sounds so delicious to me. Every time someone says that...

ADRIANA:
I know. Right? Not as tasty as it sounds.

LISA-MARIE:
I know, right?

ADRIANA:
Or at least it's a lot of work to get that tasty Kubernetes instance running.

LISA-MARIE:
Exactly, exactly. That's better than rolling your own, because in California that also has its own, connotation. But yeah, but the rest of the world, you know, they're happy with distros, you know, OpenShift and whatever, Rancher, and other distros that are out there. And that's fine. You know, you have a throat to choke, right? It's it's not as hard. But those tend to be behind the, you know, the behind trunk, right, behind the latest release. So, what are we doing at these conferences and at these meetups talking about like the latest, latest feature when it's like ,people aren't going to be able to use that for three years and people get upset. So, so I like to tell end user stories and have people share, you know, what, what they're building, how they're doing it. You know, how you're customizing Kubernetes because like I said, it's hard. What are you doing? And maybe somebody else can learn from that. So that's the user group that that we like to run out here. And that's the talks I like to submit to, to KubeCon and to other conferences. And it turns out they get accepted, a lot, because it's a story people want to hear.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah, people love hearing those stories. And speaking of KubeCon, like what was, what was the first KubeCon you ever attended?

LISA-MARIE:
Ooh. Austin. Maybe that time it snowed and we all got stuck at the airport. Or the people that were at the party at Rainy Street got snowed on. So that was probably 2017, I want to say. And then I've been, I think, every one since. I was doing all of the OpenStack summits, and I, I was one of the first ones to start talking about Kubernetes at the OpenStack summit. And I was getting like, Linux Foundation, you know, travel assistance support, because people weren't talking about Kubernetes. They were talking about Docker a little bit first, but then, Kubernetes at, at, you know, on OpenStack. And I was running meetups like, how do you run Kubernetes on OpenStack? How do you run OpenStack on Kubernetes? How do you have an OpenStack sandwich? Kubernetes, OpenStack, Kubernetes. You know, how do you have clouds spin up clouds? So it was it was early days that I got involved in the Kubernetes community, but then I, didn't actually start going to the KubeCons until I well, I went to the one in Austin. And then when I joined Portworx and we were starting to sponsor them, I started going, with, with the vendors and then just started submitting talks.

And I think I spoke at, I don't know, probably 6 or 7 KubeCons, 8 maybe?

ADRIANA:
Wow, that’s amazing! That’s such a huge accomplishment, especially, you know, considering how like, it's such a low acceptance rate. Considering how many applications they get.

LISA-MARIE:
Yeah, it used to be like, 12 to 13%, maybe higher, if you're with an end user. I think it's probably even lower than that now. But, you know, I'm a CNCF Ambassador, as are you. And so we also, get involved in talks or get asked to be part of them. So there's been a few that way. I think I've seen you speak at, with Marino, or not. And now they have the colos, I, I saw your your talk. I dove out of ArgoCon, and your talk was in the big room right across the hall. And I jumped in there. Took a bunch of photos. They didn't come out as great cause I was in the back, so I didn't send them. But I always love, love your talks. Your slides are fantastic. All of the animations and everything. You have like the, cartoons. I guess I should say, always, always informative and entertaining. So I always like to catch your talks. I caught your talk in Salt Lake City also, that you did with Marino. Yes. I mean, I'm almost like an Adriana stalker.

ADRIANA:
Oh, my God, I love it.

LISA-MARIE:
Yeah. Yeah. So KubeCon is a whole other thing, you know, surviving that, that show. But there's a lot of really great events if you, if you didn't get your talk accepted there, or you don't have your company supporting you to go there, that's one of the reasons the KCDs started. There's a lot of other, meetups, whether they're a part of the CNCF or not. You know, you can look on Luma and Meetup.com and just find all those local meetups, you know, not everybody puts their stuff through the CNCF And then there's also like, we started this conference that you were part of last time called KubeCrash. By the time this airs, so just for some branding, I got my filter on. So I don't know if it's going to come through, but. Yes, this is, the the KubeCrash branding. Okay, that's super blurry.

ADRIANA:
Just a little, just a little blurry.

LISA-MARIE:
Just like, for a minute it wasn't blurry, but anyway. Oh, there it is. Yeah. That was. So KubeCrash is a conference that, four amazing women started. Mostly it was Catherine Paganini's brainchild, and she called it Danielle Cook and me and said, you know, what do you think about this conference? And we were just coming out of Covid and we thought, like, how can we continue to bring technology to people who can't go to KubeCon? And this was KubeCon Valencia. Right before KubeCon Valencia. So we started this conference where we asked... it was all virtual, still is. We asked people to come talk about tech, talk about something Kubernetes. And it was like no time zones left behind. So we filmed it or we streamed it from our hotel room in Valencia on a US time zone. And then we thought, well, we'll just keep doing that at KubeCon. But it got to be too much to do it at KubeCon. So now we do.

ADRIANA:
Oh, yeah.

LISA-MARIE:
Two weeks before, two weeks after. So this time we will have done it next week for me, but we'll have done it on September 23rd. And then I think we're going to do the next one in January. So stay tuned for that date, probably the end of January. So it's a really great conference. We had amazing speakers. We've had Solomon Hikes keynote, we've had you know, I love to feature end users. We've had Alex Crane from Chick Fil-A. We've had Boeing. We've had a lot of banks, Capital One. We've had gosh, AI panels, you know, we we did a whole zero trust themed one. And then we started crowdsourcing our theme. And the last four times, Platform Engineering has unanimously won. So we've had a lot of Platform Engineering talks. Yeah, we had an amazing Observability panel. And I think that was the panel you were on last time, right? Or were you on?

ADRIANA:
I did, no, I did a talk with, with Reese on, troubleshooting the OTel Operator.

LISA-MARIE:
Oh, that's right. We were going to originally ask you to be on the panel, and then we were like, no, no, no, no, no, you need your own.

LISA-MARIE:
You need your own talk.

ADRIANA:
Oh my god. I feel so honored.

LISA-MARIE:
Yeah. Absolutely. Well, you know, Catherine and Danielle, we're all big fans of yours, so. So yeah. Yeah, that was a good talk. And all of the recordings are there. So if you go to KubeCrash.io and you click on past events, you can look at the one from the spring and you can see Adriana's talk. It's very good. And then we had this panel that was outstanding. I just think of you as the, OpenTelemetry expert. So I assumed you were also on that. But we, this panel was like, these five fantastic women who were just really, really good. And the panel was so good, and I just wanted to give them more and more time. So we ended up submitting it for KubeCon, and it got accepted. So we we couldn't get all the same women, but we, Danielle is going to moderate it. And, we have, so by the time this airs, that won't have happened yet. So come check out this incredible panel. Just look for Danielle Cook's talk. And four incredible experts in OpenTelemetry are going to be on that panel. So that was a fun talk to push from KubeCrash out to KubeCon, because usually we go the other direction. So KubeCrash is great. And I hope to see you all at a KubeCrash in the future.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, I'll include the link to KubeCrash in the show notes. And as a follow up question, how does, if one's interested in speaking at KubeCrash? How, what's the process for that?

LISA-MARIE:
Yeah, you if there's a, an email from the website that you can join, or sponsor, but I think is probably all one email, click on it pretty much anything and you'll get to us. And so, you know, just we we did a call for papers once, through Sessionize, and we might do it again, but, we really like, you know, people come to us with a unique idea, you know, something, informative that if we have a theme like Platform Engineering, again, that's a very broad theme. I, I want to feature more AI stuff because that's what everybody wants to talk about. And that's just the big problem everyone's trying to solve. And like, in one way or another. So those talks could be interesting. We really love featuring end users. So most of the keynotes, we’ll call them, or we always have an end user panel. So if you're a first time speaker, we also like to feature a lot of people who don't have a footprint out there on the web yet, so that when you apply to a conference, you have something you can point to and say, yes, I did this talk. So and if people are shy and, you know, they're just starting out and trying to get confidence, panels are amazing things to be on. It's really kind of low. It's not a heavy lift. Unless you're the moderator, like I often am.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, sometimes it’s more work for the moderator than the panelist.

LISA-MARIE:
It's a lot of work if you're the. Moderator, if you do it well. But, but yeah, for panelists, you know, if you're an expert in the field, let us know what it is. And, so we do, like to feature but yeah, KubeCrash.io, there's email addresses there and that that gets to all of us. If you just hit up one of us, sometimes you will, like, send me a note on LinkedIn or Catherine a note. And it's better to reach all of us because we're all busy, that we're busy at different times, and we kind of do, you know, as you do community, it's a labor of love. It tends to be your nights and weekends. So, most of us have really busy jobs that we have to focus on, so we like people to go through the channel just so they get the most eyes on things. And we do have a, we have a slack channel now for, the alumni speakers, and we have a diversity slack channel, on the CNCF Slack. So if you're, passionate about, diverse speakers and more diversity, DE&I representation at conferences, just hit one of us up. I'm probably Lisa at on the CNCF Slack. or Lisa Marie maybe. But now I think I'm just Lisa or L Namphy. I don't know, but you can Slack me and I can add you to our, diversity speaker channel. I know you're on it. And thank you very much for being on it. Yeah. Something we're all really passionate about.

ADRIANA:
Oh that's awesome. Yeah, that's so great. And I mean, especially because you do have like, your very busy day job, on top of all this. So to be able to run this as well is, I think, a testament to how important this sort of thing is. So thank you for your work on that.

LISA-MARIE:
Yeah. And it's just, you know, if you're community architect, is a title that I use, because it's more than just organizing or managing. It's really thoughtfully thinking through how to build viable communities, diverse communities, you know, inclusive communities, and sustainable communities. And it's a lot that goes into it. But it's kind of, if it's who you are, it's who you are, you know, you can't really not do it. Like I was doing it way before I was an Ambassador and way before any foundation said, you know, you should run your meetup through us or, or anything like that. You know, it's just getting people together to talk about technology. You know, we do it anyway. We geek out here on on Friday nights and talk tech and yeah, it's what we're passionate about. And so communities kind of come together around those kind of things. And you know, right now, like if you go to south of Market in, you know, the south part of San Francisco, every bar, every coffee shop, it's just AI, AI, you just hear all these, you know, startups that were started on a napkin. But like, you have all of these, like. And and all the incredible passion around what's going on, in San Francisco with a lot of the AI stuff, so you can't really get away from it, but it's, you know, luckily, I love it, and I'm super passionate about it. I kind of eat, breathe and sleep it.

ADRIANA:
It's been, you know, it's been fun dabbling in, in AI. We were try... We were chatting just before the recording started, and I've, I've, I've become very fascinated with MCP servers. So I've been having lots of fun playing around with that. I know there's an Argo CD MCP server that I think Akuity put out.

LISA-MARIE:
They like to hear their name. They like to hear their name.

ADRIANA:
That's right, that's right. The octopi are dancing around. Yeah. So I'm I'm still I'm still wrangling that one at the, wrangling with that one at the time of this recording. I'm hoping I can I can sort out my, my connectivity issues, because I, I, I love the idea of, like, I, I started vibe coding. A little bit, and it's been a journey because it's like, on the one hand especially actually for, for like, for, for SRE type tasks. Right? SRE and platform engineering type tasks, especially things like I can never remember the command for like, you know, I want to grab the base64 decoded value of a secret in Kubernetes.

LISA-MARIE:
You don’t have that command...

ADRIANA:
I don't have it memorized. I have it in. I have in my private GitHub repo a list of like, Kubernetes commands I always forget. So I’m like, now, with chat bots, I can just ask it and it'll tell me, you know, like thank you or my favorite, like, regex. Nope. Never like I've I know some, but like, you know, now I can just ask my chat bot. Hey, create a regex that does this. I’m like, great. It tells me. I don't have to worry about this crap.

LISA-MARIE:
That's going to be an awesome talk when you get that going. You should submit that. If you don't. I mean, ArgoCon is an obvious, but I think that would be an amazing KubeCon talk.

ADRIANA:
Okay, I will, I will. May be I will for KubeCrash. Dun dun dun.

LISA-MARIE:
Heck yes. That would...

ADRIANA:
Okay. Okay. Yeah. I'm giving the. I'm giving this talk. On September 22nd at the Toronto, CNCF meetup for the CNCF 10, 10th anniversary. So, yeah. So yeah, I'm happy to demo, at KubeCrash or I like your idea of submitting to ArgoCon. I think that'd be lots of fun.

LISA-MARIE:
Yeah, our January KubeCrash. That would be perfect. And it'll be perfected by then, I am sure.

ADRIANA:
That’s right. That’s right.

LISA-MARIE:
Or at the meetup in Toronto. Well, you already do in Toronto. Meetup. So.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

LISA-MARIE:
Diversify. Spread that around. But yeah. No. Vibe coding is super cool stuff. I was messing around. You know, they encourage all of us, like, even I am director of developer relations. I don't really need to write code. But we do a lot of follow me homes and try to have, customer empathy and, like, what are our users going through? And, things that, like autosave or lack of autosave is something that drives me nuts because I hate losing my work. I just can't stand it. I just typed all my goals into the system last week, and one of my team was like, I don't see your goals, where are they? And I'm like, oh, it’s in there. And like, you don't hit submit. And now I'm just, you know, I'm trying to talk to HR like you auto save them somewhere, right? Like, don't make me go through those hours of my life again. And, especially something as painful as, you know. Writing a resume or doing your goals.

ADRIANA:
Oh my gosh. No, I've I've totally had that stuff happen to me, especially, especially around those HR tasks where you're like, it's taken me forever to convince myself to do this. Now that I've done it.

LISA-MARIE:
You don't want to lose it.

ADRIANA:
Now you’ve gone and messed with all my work.

LISA-MARIE:
Right. So I was messing around, just in QuickBooks. And I was like, maybe I can build a little, you know, kind of enhance the auto save stuff so that users don't lose their work. Like, let's have an auto save every 30s. And I'm just using vibe coding, because my, my coding skills are not mad. So I'm like, vibe coding. And I'm like, okay, I can... let me try this. And I'm like, oooh, that looks... that’s so annoying. It's like popping up and now I'm losing my concentration, not my work. And so I was like, let's make that more subtle. And there's just so many cool things you can do and you know, I am geeking out for like, you know, getting lost in this hour of having fun with trying to see if I can get this feature in. Turns out I should have been doing it in my My Goals app. That'll be the next thing I try to tackle. But yeah, vibe coding is really, really cool.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, it's weirdly addictive too. Like, I feel like in a way, it's like, it's like playing slots, right? Because you're refining your prompts and you're like, oh, I'm so close. I am so close to the jackpot. So you keep going and going and going. Next thing you know, you've lost like an hour trying to refine this prompt to get it just the right way.

LISA-MARIE:
Yes. Yeah, exactly. Playing slots, throwing good money after bad. Yeah, definitely.

ADRIANA:
There is that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

LISA-MARIE:
Somewhere. I can almost reach it. I can almost get there. Oh my gosh. So fun.

ADRIANA:
Oh well we are coming up on time. But before we wrap up, I wanted to ask if you have either any hot takes or, words of wisdom that you wanted to share with our audience.

LISA-MARIE:
Oh gosh, I have, I have several, but do we get to talk about superpowers? You always ask your guests that.

ADRIANA:
Oh yeah yeah yeah! We, uh we didn't get to the light... er, sorry... I call them lightning round questions. Sometimes they're not. Sometimes they are. But we can do the, we can do the icebreaker questions really fast and then and then transition into the, into the words of wisdom. How's that sound? Okay. All right, we will we will do the lightning round questions as lightning round. Usually they take sometimes they take like 15 minutes to like most of the show.

LISA-MARIE:
Okay. We'll go. We'll be lightning.

ADRIANA:
All right. We'll be lightning. Okay. First question. Are you a lefty or a righty?

LISA-MARIE:
Righty.

ADRIANA:
Do you prefer iPhone or Android?

LISA-MARIE:
IPhone.

ADRIANA:
Do you prefer Mac, Linux, or Windows?

LISA-MARIE:
Mac.

ADRIANA:
Do you have a favorite programing language?

LISA-MARIE:
No, but my favorite text editor was Atom. Do you remember that one?

ADRIANA:
Oh my God, I do. I never used it, but I remember it.

LISA-MARIE:
Yeah, I had a t shirt and everything. Programing languages. Probably have to go with Python.

ADRIANA:
I love Python, I agree. Next question. Do you prefer JSON or YAML?

LISA-MARIE:
JASON. I mean, everybody loves to hate on YAML right? I don't. I'm not a YAML hater, I just love. I have a lot of team members name Jason. So we have. A lot of Jason. Yeah. JSON one seems to be. And the Argo guy at one point was, you know, it was a Jason and the Argonauts reference until it ended up. Also, there's an octopus in Australia called Argo. So, Jason, JSON, I got to go with that one.

ADRIANA:
Awesome. Love it. Okay. Do you prefer spaces or tabs?

LISA-MARIE:
Tabs.

ADRIANA:
Okay. And two more questions. Do you prefer to consume content through video or text?

LISA-MARIE:
Text.

ADRIANA:
And final question what is your superpower?

LISA-MARIE:
Building bridges and connecting people and technologies.

ADRIANA:
Awesome, I love it. And I mean, I get that vibe just from like our entire time in this interview. And I think it's wonderful to have, like you and others like you in the community doing that. And, and sharing their passion because. And especially as a woman in tech, because we need to inspire others like our, like us, so that they know that yes, you can do tech if you want to do it.

LISA-MARIE:
Absolutely, absolutely. Women of tech, women of color in tech, a lot of, non-binary or, LGBTQ women in tech. I love that you're doing this podcast. I love that you invited me. Thank you. So much. I mean, I thank you for all that you do for the community and for women in tech. Really appreciate it. And, really appreciate spending time with you. We need to do more of this.

ADRIANA:
I know, I know, it's always like, whenever we see each other at KubeCons, it's always like, hi, bye! Like, because KubeCon is so, you know, like, busy.

LISA-MARIE:
Yeah.

ADRIANA:
So, it was so nice at the Intuit event in Toronto. This I guess early summer, to, like, get some time to chat. And, I'm very, very glad that you were able to come on the podcast, because for me, it's so important to, to elevate women in tech and other members of upper... underrepresented groups on this podcast. So, I really want to I want to share people's amazing stories and, and love of technology, geeking out on the things that they love. With, with this audience. So thank you.

LISA-MARIE:
Yes. And thank you for validating all of our inner geeks. It's really fun to geek out with another woman. It's actually super, super fun. I love it.

ADRIANA:
Awesome. And so now for your parting words of wisdom.

LISA-MARIE:
I, I would say since we've been talking about KubeCon and conferences, I would say these conferences are great. They're great for meeting people. They're great for networking. They're great for getting together. They're great for learning. If you leave the conference and you leave it all at the conference, it was totally worthless. So what I encourage people to do, and my dear friend Jono Bacon is really big on this is. Probably who... he's one of my mentors and who taught me to really think, very thoughtfully about this. What is the one thing you're going to do when you leave the conference to take with you going forward, so that you keep it going and do it the first day you get home? Like, what is the first day when you're back in the office? The thing you're going to do that you learned at the conference or that you got out of the conference? And if you were only there networking, you know, write to all those folks on LinkedIn, do something and make a connection. Invite one of them out to, you know, to lunch, to tea, coffee, whatever it is. But if it was, you know, community Leadership Summit or a DE&I day, all of that learning is worthless unless we do something with it. So what are you going to do on day one when you get back from the event or the conference or the meetup that's going to be game changing that you learned at the meetup. And if you approach every conference that way, I think we can all be game changing.

ADRIANA:
Oh, that is amazing, I love that. That is great advice. I mean, this is the best way to make the most out of your conference experience. And and keeping that in mind, right, as you're attending the conference, so that you don't, you know, it's at the back of your mind for when you get home. I love it.

LISA-MARIE:
Exactly. Don't leave it all at the conference. Otherwise what was the point?

ADRIANA:
That's right. Yeah, that's great advice. Well, thank you so much, Lisa, for geeking out with me today. And y'all, don't forget to subscribe and be sure to check the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media. Until next time...

LISA-MARIE:
Peace out and geek out.

ADRIANA:
Geeking Out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Villela. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking Out is also produced by my daughter, Hannah Maxwell, who, incidentally, designed all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the socials, by going to bento.me/geekingout.

The One Where We Geek Out on Storytelling with Colleen Coll

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Adriana Villela, Colleen Coll) — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 04:00:00 +0000

Key takeaways:

Being laid off "forced" Colleen to upskill, so that she could broaden her skill set and therefore open up more job possibilities
The importance of having a good support network - Bart Farrell encouraged Colleen to get into video editing
How to put out a great short format video? Be a great storyteller!
Even though Colleen didn't find a job as a journalist, she realized that she could still find writing jobs in other areas
Some people feel intimidated by storytelling, even when they're constantly exposed to great stories.
If you're going to be a great storyteller, you have to be a great listener.
Writing about a topic with which you are unfamiliar means putting in the time to do research and cite references. AI can help with some of the grunt work, but it won't replace crafting a well-written story.
How support from the cloud native community helped Colleen during her time being unemployed
Even with DEI initiatives going the way of the dodo, we need to keep speaking about these important topics and elevating underrepresented groups.
Having a strong community like the CNCF keeps us wanting to stay in that community.
Tell your story, because it will always resonate with someone, and it can change your life.

About our guest:

"Allow myself to introduce...myself." - Austin Powers

Find our guest on:

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show notes:

And geeking out with me today, I have Colleen Coll. Welcome, Colleen!

COLLEEN:
Hello. Hi, Adriana.

ADRIANA:
I'm so happy to have you on. And, you know, like, I'm pinching myself. I'm like, why did I not have you on sooner? Like.

COLLEEN:
Well, I'd just be honored. I am honored that you finally asked. But I wasn't expecting it because I was just loving it as a spectator. Because you have so many. So many interesting people talking about whatever. Even if it's tech, even if it's not tech. Just kicking out, period. And geeking out in general, in particular topics. So, when you asked me, I was like, what? So. Yeah. Thanks for having me.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Super excited. Okay, well, I'm going to start off with, some icebreaker questions. Okay. First question. Are you a lefty or a righty?

COLLEEN:
I am a righty. Most of my partners are always lefties.

ADRIANA:
Really?

COLLEEN:
Oh, yeah. I probably shouldn't be telling everybody, but both of my husbands, both former husbands were lefties.

ADRIANA:
That is so wild!

COLLEEN:
They’re great guys. Nothing bad. We're all cool.

ADRIANA:
I got to ask, for, for a righty living with a lefty. Were there any, like, nuances that you noticed?

COLLEEN:
Okay. Now, thinking about it. I think that they were. Oh, yes, I do. I think they had better handwriting than me. So I can't I never, like, had the chance to see if that was, you know, to test that out, that theory out. But both lefties had better, way better handwriting than myself.

ADRIANA:
That's so interesting. Did you ever, have, like, did you ever did you ever notice, like, if someone's putting a knife away in a knife block or like, hanging a coat on the hanger, like the the sort of lefty nuances where it's, like,flipped around.

COLLEEN:
I should have. No, I have not.

ADRIANA:
I'm just curious because I'm the only lefty in my household. It's it's... my my husband, my daughter, and I, living together, and, I'm the only lefty, and I. I impose my will upon them.

COLLEEN:
And it has everything to do with how you, like, hang a coat. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

ADRIANA:
So I'll hang my coat and I'll hang other people's coats facing a, facing one way, like the lefty way on the coat hanger and then knives on the knife block. Oh, like if my husband puts a knife in the knife block, I'll like, reverse it. To to suit my needs.

COLLEEN:
Wait, wait, wait. Is there a difference in how you hang the toilet paper roll?

ADRIANA:
No, we agree on that one.

COLLEEN:
I think that's I.

ADRIANA:
Think, I don't know, like, they're they're they're. We might not be together if we disagreed on that one.

COLLEEN:
Just checking because I.

ADRIANA:
Do feel like, wars, wars are fought over how how one hangs toilet paper rolls.

COLLEEN:
Girl, don’t get me started. Anyways.

ADRIANA:
I love the sidebar. Okay. Did I ask you, do you prefer iPhone or Android?

COLLEEN:
Oh, I prefer, well, I don't know if I prefer, but it's. What I have had is the iPhone. But, friends of mine that have the, Androids, I mean, those are, they're fucking impressive, especially when it comes to the camera, so. I’m in video and digital, and I'm like, maybe I should switch, but I don't know. I think there's a community or maybe a cult, that if I do switch, I’ll be hunted down. I’m that paranoid. So we'll see.

But I, I like them both, but I can't. I mean, for, video and digital, anything like that. Pics. I mean, I mean, hands down the Droids, they're, they're awesome.

ADRIANA:
One of my friends who's on Android upgraded her phone recently, and she had the dopest photo of an eagle in mid-flight. And I'm like.

COLLEEN:
See?

ADRIANA:
Wut?

COLLEEN:
See? Yeah, I mean, it's just the truth, but yeah, whatever. Maybe I just have to buy a camera.

ADRIANA:
I have my, my old dSLR, gathering dust in my house. I haven't picked it up for like, five years now. I don't know if I ever told you this, but I used to be a, I was for a year, a professional photographer. So, I did family photography. I quit tech. I quit tech. Because I was, like, sick and tired of it. And I hated my job. And I hated my life so completely.

My my work life. Not my life life. And. Yeah, so I, I, I was a family photographer, and so I invested in a nice, like, I got like a full frame Canon dSLR and like, the fancy ass lenses. And I taught myself Photoshop, and I got pretty good at taking the family photos, but then I hated... I had, like, some of the nastiest clients. And that just drove me away.

COLLEEN:
I totally understand. I used to be, before I got into tech. I used to be, because I've always been in events, but I used to be on the hospitality, restaurant side, and I planned, freelance planned weddings, bar mitzvas, stuff like that. And yeah, I know how people can be.

ADRIANA:
Actually weddings like, I, I never, I never, shot weddings because I was really scared, of, like, the bridezillas and the, you can't fuck up my perfect moment. And I'm like, oh, my god, what if I miss the shot? Like, you're going to get angry.

COLLEEN:
I know this sounds completely like, cliché, but it was never the brides for me. It's always the brides’ mothers.

ADRIANA:
Oh.

COLLEEN:
I mean, yeah, but my favorite experience, my best experience was planning this, bar mitzvah for, the the, his partner, his wife was, she was a VP. She was way too busy. So she asked, her husband, this guy who's just fucking amazing, and he says, look, I want to hire you. I know what I want, but I want somebody to organize it for me.

And I was like, yeah, cool. And it was just it went off so smoothly from the planning process to the day, to a point where they wanted me to dance with them. But I'm just like, I know that’s a little unprofessional but, fuck it, I did anyway. I had so much fun! But. And there are so many, so much candy.

It's not even funny. I don't know... like, sweets, everywhere. And I know when you're that age and all those kids. And that's what you know, because, I mean, they were really partying.

But it was amazing. It was just amazing. So yeah, but I get it.

ADRIANA:
You know, it's funny though, because like, you know, you you've got like your 1 or 2 dream clients and then they kind of in some ways it kind of ruin it for you because you want all of your clients to be like that. And you're like...

COLLEEN:
Yeah... but it's all good. That's why I'm in the business. I should get out based on some of these experiences that I have had with people and planning, but maybe I'm just like a glutton for punishment because I can't stay out of it. But event plan... I, I just love it. And I love to travel and I love meeting new people. And, you know, even sometimes when those people aren't really nice.

ADRIANA:
And you're very talented at it. And I definitely want to I'm dying to dig more into into that very shortly. Okay. Next question. Are you a Mac, Linux, or Windows gal?

COLLEEN:
I am a Mac fully. I used to be. No, I'm Mac. Screw it. I just, I mean, I went to Windows for a minute, and it's nice, but when I went back to Mac. And these weren't my choices, these... based on where you work or, you know. Project is. And right now I have my MacBook Air, and I just fucking love it. And, one of the clients I have right now, because it's super privacy, kind of cyber security, they sent me, what is it?

I forget. Some kind of Windows. I think it's IBM. No, it's, Shit. I don't even know what it is. That's why I hate it. It's said Dell. Fuck that. Yeah. Dell. Yeah. It's great because I used to have it. Dell. Yeah, yeah.

ADRIANA:
I know. Dell was like, a part of my life for a long time.

COLLEEN:
Huge ass clunky thing, and and, I don't know, my fingers are just not used to the mousepad that they had. I had to, like, super like, press harder. But it was an old version, you know? But I mean, I can't I'm, I'm, I'm spoiled at the moment. Yeah. And, I'd like to stay there, but you know, I, you know, I can be bought. So I’ll go with whatever they get me.

ADRIANA:
It's funny you mentioned the the like the mouse clicking on on the non Macs because there was one job It was a semi recent job where it was a, a Windows shop. So there was no Mac for me and I was, I was so sad. And they gave me a Lenovo and I swear I spent the whole time I was there, like crying over my laptop. And just like the lack of that, like beautiful Mac experience. So I can... I for sure I feel you on the on the touchpad experience. It's just it's it's not the same. Obviously, beggars can't be choosers, but whenever I'm, you know, applying to a company, I'm like, so, do you, do you allow for Macs, do you distribute Macs to your employees?

COLLEEN:
Yes.

ADRIANA:
And if they say yes, then it's like, bonus points.

COLLEEN:
Yes, yes. I've been I've been very lucky with, some of the past companies that I've worked for and they've been Mac. But I get it, though, I, I love that I have experience with both.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Yeah for sure for sure.

COLLEEN:
So it's it's good. I can just like, you know, adjust to anything. And that's part of being in events. You got to be that way and being a part of the community, being in media, I mean, nothing should shock you, but,

ADRIANA:
So true. Speaking of media, I've got, I've got two more questions for you. Do you prefer to consume, content through video or text?

COLLEEN:
Ooooh... video. At the moment. It's interesting because... That. Last year I really got into short form video, because I was pitching myself, and I was kind of desperate I was laid off from a year and a half ago, January 2024.

So I was just desperate to find work. And sometimes when you are desperate and vulnerable to find work, you got to upskill and find out. Oh, another way that you could pitch yourself, especially being my age and not, as you know, young and, and, I'm “seasoned”, but sometimes “seasoned” people may be a liability for some companies.

I have no idea why, but that's another issue that we can talk about. Yeah, yeah. But, yeah, I, I needed to upskill, and, my son used to do my videos for me for where I used to work, and he got this new job, and he's like, hey, mom, I don't have time for you. You need to learn.

ADRIANA:
There's the ultimate incentive. Like, sorry, buddy.

COLLEEN:
Yeah. So I said, okay, I'll do it. And I took these tutorials with Capcut and, just and just do, you know, just kind of upskill and found these, these, this information about, you know, how to boost your campaigns with video and short form video, got on TikTok, which is an addiction.

So to answer your question, to get my news, I love the short form video. And I love getting it... the alerts on my phone. And I love that if there's video with it, it's great. I love, getting the links to stories, but sometimes you have to pay for a subscription, and I don't get the full...

Yeah, but I belong to a lot of newsletters, TLDR news newsletter is where I get most of my content, whether it's Fast Company, whether it's TLDR for tech. AI lot of AI newsletters. So that's how I usually get my content.

ADRIANA:
That's very cool. It's interesting. Like, you you touched on a couple of things that I want to unpack. First of all, the short form videos, like, so for me, for me personally, I don't like videos, for consuming content. For me, it's like a last resort. And I'll, I'll always, I'll, I'll default to text when I can.

I will say, though, that, my, my daughter has gotten me into, like, Instagram Reels, like watching them. So we’ll just, like, send each other. I have, like, a circle of friends, plus my daughter, where we just, like, send each other Instagram Reels all the time. But I have this weird thing on Instagram Reels where I don't like to turn up the sound.

So I, I like to have. I prefer the reels with the captions. And so that's how I watch my reels. And if they make me turn up the sound, it’s like, nope.

COLLEEN:
Well that's funny. They do say that, Adriana, because that's how I do it. I do you well, you can't do that on TikTok. I don't think you can. But for Reels in Instagram, I just keep it quiet and do I see something funny? Then I'm like, oh, and there's certain influencers that I do want to see, especially the the comedies. I'm always like...

ADRIANA:
I love the comedy ones.

COLLEEN:
Oh yes. And they make me laugh. So there’s definitely, turning up the volume on that one. But yeah. So yeah. Okay. Video over text.

ADRIANA:
And then the other thing that I want to mention, because you said, like you, you've done some short form video, and I have to say, so first of all, I've seen your short form videos. They are super awesome. Like, just next level. And, you know, it's interesting, like, there is, it's such a different skill to produce short form video compared to long form video. And I was wondering if you could, talk a little bit, about that. Like what, that's like, what. What the differences are.

COLLEEN:
Well, coming from someone who’s dabbled as a producer and not more of the logistics part of AV, audio visual, and then getting thrown in, if you want to call it thrown in. But getting desperate and vulnerable to make sure you put... to upskill, learning this was not as hard as I thought, but to be good at it. You got to be creative and you have to be a fucking fantastic storyteller.

Now I know people throw videos together, but then there's people that tell the story, and I had to give a huge mother effing shout out to the guy that inspires me. He always does, and he's one I don't only at my son. Well, my son said, mom, I don't have time for you, but Bart Farrell is the guy. He says, Colleen,

I think you would be good at this. I think that you would be good at this. And I finally got into it and he is the f the M-F-er GOAT.

ADRIANA:
Oh my God. Like, Bart’s stuff is so good.

COLLEEN:
Yes. And I'm, I'm waiting for him to, like, not be good. And even his stuff that isn't fantastic is fucking amazing. I just, I follow him and he tells a fucking story in all of his videos, whether it's something about kickboxing somewhere or being on the floor at CNCF or anything. It does it. It's the way he shows it.

It's the way the zooms. It's the way he crowd shots, the music he uses, the close ups of the people and the slow motion of their hands. I'm like, wow, oh, I just love it. So that's my advice. You have to be a great storyteller. You can't just like, put it out there because people want to see creative and storytelling no matter what.

Even if you're not doing it through video you have and you do it through text. If you can tell a great story and it, resonates with people, you will have followers, if that's what you're looking for. I just want to put out good content that if, if, if there's a tribe of people or community people that will, will like, but it it resonates with them.

And there was a pain point. There's something that they can resolve and and I can help with that. So that's, I mean, that's my story and I'm sticking with it.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. And I think you're so spot on on on like telling the story and like because they're short form videos, like they have to be engaging. Right. Because for the first five seconds this thing's boring. Like, fuck off. I don't want to. Next up next, real.

COLLEEN:
Girl, I’m glad you said that. Because when I'm on TikTok and I'm, you know, I scroll and if somebody is going on and they don't get me into the next, like 15 seconds, I'm just like, scroll. Yeah. I mean, you gotta wow me. You know, seriously, about what you want to say. If you're selling something, you're telling a joke and sometimes even silence can tell the story just just by looking at the fucking

ADRIANA:
it's funny, because I think a lot of, like, I think YouTube and Instagram have upped the length of their of their shorts, Reels, what have you.

And even though, like on the one hand, I'm like, because I post climbing videos. Sometimes my climbing videos are over a minute. On the one hand I'm like, yay, I don't have to cut this or speed it up. On the other hand, I'm like, oh shit, now I have to watch this fucking long video. I don't want to watch it.

COLLEEN:
Well, I mean, I think the long forms can be more educational and the other ones are, if you speed it up. This was more of a promo and an advertisement. I mean, it's just how, how how you use it and but you have that community of climbers and community. I mean, you and Marino, you guys are fucking crazy. I'm not doing that.

ADRIANA:
Okay, I have a final question from the list. What is your superpower?

COLLEEN:
Oh, it’s easy. I'm a kickass storyteller.

COLLEEN:
Mostly writing. And now I'm getting into the video part of it and I want to perfect that.

ADRIANA:
Nice.

COLLEEN:
That is my biggest superpower. My second is I throw great parties.

ADRIANA:
Right on.

COLLEEN:
And even when I'm older now and I'm like, can I just have theme parties, like all the time? My last big theme party was when I turned 54, two years ago, and I had a studio 54 party. And I just came up with the idea.

So I had about a hundred people come to this party and it was amazing. It was amazing. So yeah, I don't know how I'm going to be, keep doing that, because I’m getting a little tired. And if I do, it’ll be smaller versions. But yeah, that's my superpowers.

ADRIANA:
That's so cool. And I gotta ask, like, how did you get into, like, the storytelling first with the writing and then transitioning into video? You alluded a little bit to the video part, but how how did you get with the writing?

COLLEEN:
Well, it's this is funny. I actually my, my major in college was journalism. Yeah. And, I loved writing. I remember being in high school and I wanted to write for the paper, and they were looking for people to review, music. And this is back in the 80s. Damn it. So I reviewed Run-DMC. Which one was at the time the one that they had, Walk This Way on it and, and it was like, maybe 500 words.

I got sort of popular for reviewing music. So I decided when I went to go to college, I'm going to major in journalism, blah, blah, blah. I love writing. Those classes were, wow, I mean, you if you had two errors or grammar, whether it's grammar, spelling or anything, you get an instant F.

Just they, I mean, they, they really put like a lot of stress. But when I graduated, I couldn't find a fucking journalism job if my life depended on it. And if I did, it paid nothing. Not a goddamn thing.

But no, I struggled, but I did. This is what I figured out is that whatever I got into, whether it was marketing or, business strategy or whatever, that was available, they needed writers. And then I just, then I became a speech writer for events, and and it just, just kept going and going. But I focused on event planning, project management and, and just just straight up marketing and how to promote product services and shit like that, and loyalty programs for restaurants.

I worked in health care, but people love when you know how to write, because there's... a lot of people just don't.

ADRIANA:
It I feel like it's a lost art form to a certain extent because there's, there are like especially in, in tech. So I, my, my degree is in industrial engineering. And one of the prerequisites of my program was, in my first year, we all had to take a technical writing course. Everyone like groaned about it and like, fuck, technical writing is hard.

But I do appreciate... as as hard as it was. And I was like, used to writing prose, and I was like pretty good at, at English class and kicked ass with the essays and all that. But, you know, like, technical writing is so fucking dry, so precise. But anyway, it taught me an appreciation for for that form of writing, especially like when it comes to documentation, but just in general, like I, it it's sad that there aren't enough good writers in tech, because I think we really, really need them.

COLLEEN:
I think sometimes the expectation, I think some people are intimidated by it. Because some of the people that I've, I've met in tech are incredible storytellers. I just think that they just don't see themselves as that. And it's, most of these people read... read comic books, watch movies that are very great, the storytelling, you know, on steroids.

They just really need to have the confidence to do that. And then the ones that do you see them as influencers, whether they have podcasts or they're just writing stuff. Justin Garrison, and YOU. Hello. And, yeah. And Tim Banks is a great storyteller. I mean.

ADRIANA:
Oh, yeah.

COLLEEN:
And then Kelsey Hightower, when he just... he's a great storyteller. No, not only in his writing, whether it's, social media post, but when he gets on stage, he whether it's scripted or not, he doesn't look like he's scripted. And he tells a story that always comes back to what the topic is. That is so easy and difficult for certain people, because they're intimidated by it. And some people are naturals at it and some people can learn it. And what I like to do is I like to be the producer of it. A lot of people think that I have this camera and whatever, and I'm like, they're like, oh, you're an influencer. I'm like, hell fucking no, I'm not.

I’m the last person. Nothing wrong with the influencers. The ones who get, do it, do it right. I'm following you. But I am the producer. I like to tell the story with my camera. And if I'm in it, like, for a minute. This is me. This is. This is my signature. Me being in.

People ask me, Colleen, don’t you want to be interviewed? I'm like, no. No. The only time I would like to be, if I'm doing the interviewing, I will stand there. Whatever. But I consider myself as a producer, and that's how I tell my story. But you're right. Tech writing is not easy. But there's specific parts of writing. There's the creative. And you can do that in tech and then the things that you really need to not fuck up with, like the documentation when you're doing tech writing, whether it's for coding or whatever.

But even before I got into tech, I was writing, NIH grants for people, because I used to be in biotech, for a lot of research assistants. And you're trying to get money, you know, for their, their cause. I know a lot of, you know, a lot of it had to do with, you know, curing cancer.

So you have to be like. And then those instructions for NIH grants. Oh, my God. I mean, if I can survive that, I am the best project manager on this planet.

And you find some other people who were project managers for NIH grants, and they will tell you. They, I mean, it's just like, it's just another life. It's like being in another, like in the matrix and stuff. But that's how I got my whole brain of how to do, how to separate creative storytelling and documentation and project management that's straight up.

Yeah, whatever. And then combining the two. I hope I explained that right. But it's, it's it's good. And I never really noticed how awesome it was for me in the future, because when I got laid off and I just thought, okay, I'm just looking for something, event planning, event planning. And people ask me, well, can you write? Can you ghost write? I'm like, yeah, I guess I could, and now I'm doing more of that than I am event planning, and I fucking love it. I went back to my roots.

ADRIANA:
I love that so much. I have to say, like, by the way, mad skills. You know, you mentioned that you have have done speechwriting and I feel like that requires some mad skills because you have to write the speech in a way that conveys the voice of the person delivering the speech.

COLLEEN:
Yeah. And I'm glad you mentioned that, because some people can be a natural at it, if you know what you're doing. I'm a natural at it because I sit and I listen to people, and that's a fucking art these days because I know when to shut the fuck up. I you all know who I'm talking about.

But one of the things, if you're going to be a great storyteller, you need to shut the fuck up and just listen. This this, gig that I have right now is, there's a, one of, the VPs was asked to be a co-presenter, and, at one of these sessions at IBM Tech Exchange, and, one of the strategies is to put together... What one of the projects put together a social media strategy, you know, pre, during and post to make him like, this is awesome.

We want people to go to this session. And they're like, oh, Colleen, can you write content? I'm like, yeah. And I can write some thought leadership pieces and stuff like that. And I'm like, I, do you know, Robert? I was like, no, I don't know, Robert. But this is what I'm going to do with Robert. I'm going to sit down.

I'm going to have a one on one with Robert, and I'm going to ask him, brainstorm what is his expectation? I'm going to look at him. I'm going to listen to it, I’m going to listen to his tone. I'm going to listen how he explains what the topic is on this session, and I'm just going to listen and I'm just going to watch. And that's how I get the tone. That's an art, and I'm really good at it.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, I was going to say, like, easier said than done. I'm sure like to be able to really capture.

COLLEEN:
People are paying me for it. So I'm getting all these like people I've heard and they're like, Colleen, I need for you to go write this for me. You know, thought leadership is like, yeah, yeah.

ADRIANA:
You're a chameleon, I love it.

COLLEEN:
Did I mention I like money?

ADRIANA:
I was going to mention the, I guess the other aspect of, of, what you're doing, too, is like, not only conveying that person's voice, but writing about things that you might not necessarily be, like, super familiar with, either, I would imagine.

COLLEEN:
That's where the journalism background comes in. Because and, and not a lot of people have that. And yes, AI is great. LLMs, thank god, they save me a lot of work. But if you don't know how to capture, something that you don't know about, by not doing the research and not looking like you don't know what the fuck you're talking about, not knowing how to cite where you got your information and all that other stuff.

Yeah, I mean, eventually AI will probably get better at it, but I can see it from a mile away. And a lot of people, other people will. But not only that, I can see that AI, if it's straight up and it's not crafted, if you do AI, what saves me a lot of is the research part of it.

I have to find where I'm going to find it. I know where to find it, I read it, I make sure that this is, being a journalist, that whatever I found is valid. Yes. Yeah. Because you never, don't ever want to get caught. You know, you go viral that you're an asshole. But, no, it's just that's where I differ... is I have a journalistic background where I know how to get that information.

It's easy for me now. So I, well I don’t want to say easy. It's quicker, so I can be more productive in putting out more, information.

ADRIANA:
And isn't it cool how, like, things that you've done in the past end up playing such a huge factor in your present, right?

COLLEEN:
It is very cool. And I'm glad you said that, because I had no idea. I love being event planner. My goal right until last year was to go global with conferences. I love the CNCF. I love being in that community, but now I have this new thing I just never thought I would get back to and I love.

I realize how much I love writing and now I'm realizing how I can combine it to what my goals were. To be in on site media coverage. And now using video.

And one of the things that I don't want to lose, and I'm sorry if I this is not part of your your questions, but, how do I say this? Not being in the community as an employed individual last year, was seriously, heartbreaking. It was mentally fucked up for me, because I felt like I was like kicked out of a club. But not intentionally.

Me trying to get back in, you know, like in high school and shit. And, what I discovered, is meeting people like you and people like Marino and all these other awesome people, Bart, making sure that I don't get lost. Like, hey Colleen. Whether they're telling me about, you know, job opportunities or project opportunities and freelance. I mean, I, I've had the opportunity when people heard that I was looking for Tech Field Day, to, Futurum Group, to Visible Impact.

All these people asking me to do stuff. Yeah. And Bart, and and and and, the Marinos and even Tim and and everybody just just letting me know. Colleen, we got your back. That is something I hope that the CNCF community keeps. because they do it well when they do it well. And, I still want to be in that in some way or fashion.

I know things are changing. Don't get me started with this new current administration. When things change, whether you're especially being a woman and a person of color, how we we keep in the mix and we don't stray away from that. And I'm going to keep being an activist for it, even though some people don't think that I should.

But, fuck it. That's how I’m built. I can't keep quiet when things like that are important. When you roll back things that worked and kept people like us in the mix having those opportunities because you, oh my God, you were just so great. And I'm always going to be your cheerleader. You, Autumn Nash, and a bunch of other women in tech and and women of color.

But when I saw that what was going on in the rollbacks, I was like, oh no, no, no, we're not doing this.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah. And that's why it's so important. Like, honestly, it's one of the reasons why I keep doing the podcast, is I want to keep elevating, you know, underrepresented groups, people who like, you know, DEI haters shit on just because we're not we don't look like what, what whatever, whatever that stereotype is. And we need to keep just keepin’ on.

And I really appreciate you like, talking about these things and even, you know, what you were saying, the feeling of of being unemployed, and and feeling like you were, like, out of the club kind of. And I think having those conversations is really important because we, we often seem the sort of, like, cheery, you know. Oh, well, you know, I'm looking for my next opportunity and it's, you know, I see this as a great opportunity for blah blah, which is awesome to have that like, positive outlook, but like, let's face it, we're human.

This shit hurts. It hurts. It feels like rejection. Even if it's, you know, like, can't be helped for whatever reason. It still is so shitty. And I think having a place where people can freely talk about it and just like, let their feelings go is so important.

COLLEEN:
People are scared of change. And I get it. But, because they've never experienced it before. You can't. Just because everything is working for you. Not. Well, forget about other people who are probably going through something. And I had people were like, oh, Colleen, you should smile more or, you know, don't get so... don't give up something will come.

I'm like, I know that, I said, but I really appreciated the other people. People that would like, oh, man, I'm I'm so scared. You know, I don’t know if I'm going to find something. And these people just shut the fuck up and let me say what I had to say. And then just gave me a fucking hug. And I always will appreciate that.

So when this happens to when I know that if I see it happening with other friends, I will never. If they reach out to me, ever, ever treat anybody the way I've seen others do. You know, get ghosted, or don't even acknowledge them or just play them off like, oh, don't worry, you know, I mean, people like you said, people are human and that is some serious shit to get through.

And Microsoft with their layoffs and I'm sure there's going to be more. So, but I want to be a community. I want to be in that community of people to help. Whether I repost something, if you just want to talk to me, and I'll try, even though I'm probably not in your space at all, but I'm going to be that person. And sometimes that's not being popular.

I don't give a fuck if I'm popular anymore, if I have something to say. So I know you all. Or if somebody watching this. You know who I'm talking about. I will always advocate for everyone in need, especially people, women and persons of color, especially in the tech community.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, absolutely. And I so appreciate everything that you do. Like your your work is incredible. And I, you know, I, I'm, I'm so lucky we got connected. And it's funny too, how we got connected. I want to say it was like sometimes, sometime last year you reached out to me, because you were helping out with, State of Open Con, right?

And uh, like, hey, can you do, like, a a quick episode with Amanda Brock to promote State of Open Con? I'm like, oh.

COLLEEN:
That's right. And I didn't even know. I was just so happy there was some woman, there's a woman of color that was doing podcasts in tech because I don't see that often. And I was like, oh my god, that's wonderful. And Amanda, you know, being a woman and all her hard work for State of Open Con. I mean, I love being in that, in that space.

I'm just so happy. And you, you went out of your way to do it even though because I know, you know, it was last minute. But, you know, that's media.

Yeah. So that's how we met. And then I heard I saw that you were connected to, you know, my folks, like Marino Tim. And, and then I met, some more people, via you. And we saw each other. I think I was open source in Seattle or somewhere I can.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, we run in a lot of the same conference circles, right? Yeah. I know it's such a treat when I see you around. I'm like, oh, there's Colleen doing her thing! Yay!

And then like, next thing you know the videos are out and you're like, oh damn. That was fast! Those videos are really good. And that was so fast.

COLLEEN:
So yeah, I, I just love this community. And and I'm glad that the majority love me back. You know, for sure.

ADRIANA:
I know we're, we're kind of coming up on time, but really quickly, I did want to talk, briefly about, if you can, quickly talk about how you got into the CNCF community.

COLLEEN:
Oh, this is fantastic. When I got my job, through The New Stack, that was one of my first jobs after, Covid. Well, actually, it was during Covid, and I. I just lost my job in biotech. And I was looking. And then, don't you know, Covid happened, so I'm just like, whatever. And, The New Stack hired me, and they hired me as a producer, a digital person, and they're like, okay, Colleen, we got it.

Even though it was virtual. You need to plan this, you know, this and that, because we need to plan our interviews or podcast with CNCF. I'm like, what the hell is this? Yes. Yeah. And I met Chad and all these other media people and I'm like, and they were so welcoming. And I just got I got thrown into it, but not in a negative space.

I mean, in a way. It was just awesome. And this huge community of people I got to meet like Stephen Augustus and, and and Priyanka and all these other people, like. And I was seeing women in spaces that I've never seen before, and I just loved it. So that's how I got into it. And and then when I went to a small startup called the Duckbill Group, same people, and always attached.

Everybody knows each other. Just like a huge family. So that's how I got into it. That's why I don't ever want to leave.

ADRIANA:
Oh my God, I love it, I love it. We definitely want you! We are coming up on time and I know you have to go. So before we part ways, do you have any words of wisdom for folks in our audience in the spicy, non spicy, whatever flavor you want.

COLLEEN:
I don't want people to give up, their stories. Try to be as, as the best storyteller of your own story, as, as and put it out there as fast as you can, because, you never know what's going to happen. And it always it will resonate with someone else. And it could change your fucking life. Tell your story.

ADRIANA:
I love that. Oh, that's so wonderful. Thank you so much, Colleen. This has been an absolute pleasure. And I'm so glad that we, got a chance to do this. So thank you for geeking out with me today, y'all. Don't forget to subscribe and be sure to check the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media. Until next time.

COLLEEN:
Peace out, geek out!

The One Where We Geek Out on Perspective with Duffie Cooley

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Duffie Cooley, Adriana Villela) — Tue, 7 Oct 2025 04:00:00 +0000

Key takeaways:

Being able to see things from different perspectives allows you to open your mind to see and solve problems from different angles. It also allows us to reach others better.
Life-long learning is a must in tech careers, otherwise we can't improve and evolve.
How early recognition and support from Duffie's mom helped him learn to read with dyslexia.
Spending time in Hawaii and California while growing up gave Duffie different perspectives that have served him well in his tech career.
There are tools out there available for exploration, for those curious enough to learn about different technologies. You just need to bring your curiosity.
Finding the right fit at a company is more than just overall company culture. It's also about team culture and having people believe in you and give you room to grow and succeed.
Welcoming tech communities are those that have systems and supports in place to grow and nurture new contributors.
How do you communicate effectively when the words you're using may be interpreted as a challenge? Let them know that you only seek to understand, and are relying on their expertise for that.
Everything you've been through has set you up for success moving forward
Don't fall in love with your code; when someone builds on your code or ideas, take it as form of praise, and not as a form of criticism.
When a company is acquired by another company, how do you keep the acquired employees from jumping ship? Keep them motivated, and ensure that there is a clear vision tying their work to the overall vision.
An expert as someone who can take other people and make them proficient at a thing; not somebody who knows all the answers.
Understanding a problem from multiple perspectives is a is a multiplier for your understanding and for your career.
Make room for things to be hard. Not everything has to be easy for everybody.

About our guest:

Duffie Cooley is the Field CTO for Isovalent @ Cisco. He has been involved in the Kubernetes Community since 2017. He is an emeritus member of the CNCF Technical Oversight Committee and has helped lots of folks learn more about The Kubernetes Ecosystem and eBPF through tgik and eCHO office hours. His handle is mauilion as he grew up in Maui, Hawaii and likes big cats. If you see his face come say hi! He's usually carrying around a few cool stickers as well.

Find our guest on:

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show notes:

Additional notes:

Geeking Out: Liz Fong-Jones on being a Field CTO

Transcript:
ADRIANA:
Hey everyone, welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast, in which we dive into the career journeys of some of the amazing humans in tech and geek out on topics like software development, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada.

And geeking out with me today. I have Duffie Cooley. Welcome, Duffie.

DUFFIE:
Thank you so much.

DUFFIE:
It's an honor to be here. You have such a tremendous, you know, history of podcasts so far. So I'm just really grateful to be a part of it.

ADRIANA:
Oh, thank you so much. And, Duffie, where are you calling from today?

DUFFIE:
I live in Alameda, which is not too far from San Francisco. It's right across the Bay Bridge.

ADRIANA:
I got to, like, nerd out with you when you said Alameda is. It makes me think of Star Trek IV. It is. It is the same place.

DUFFIE:
This is where the nuclear vessels were hosted.

ADRIANA:
So this is why I know of Alameda.

DUFFIE:
Another one that, people connect with is, what do you call it? MythBusters.MythBusters did a bunch of stuff, like, out on this, like. And you're like, where in the Bay Area did you find such a big, flat space to, like, crash semi-trucks? Here on Alameda out on the point. That’s where it was filmed.

ADRIANA:
Oh, that's so wild, I remember MythBusters. That was a great show.

DUFFIE:
It was. I love the whole premise. You know, it's like people having, like, the the, some challenging thing, and you're like, is it real? Did it really happen? All right.

ADRIANA:
Let's. Yeah. Yeah, and by the way, my my my final comment on Alameda and the Star Trek movies, I know everyone loves Wrath of Khan, but Star Trek IV still holds a place in my heart as the best one, because there is time travel and Scotty talking to an old Mac. So...

DUFFIE:
I remember seeing that movie for the first time I was, I, I grew up in Hawaii.

ADRIANA:
Oh cool.

DUFFIE:
That movie is one of the movies that I absolutely remember seeing in the Kaahumanu Theater, like in in Kahului in Maui. It's like, you know, there are a few movies where you like, really connect with a place in a time. And that's one of those movies for me.

ADRIANA:
That's so awesome. Cool. I have so many questions now about, like, growing up in Hawaii, but, I'm going to start first with our, lightning round questions. Are you ready? Tsk... icebreaker. Used to call them Lightning Round. But they're not lightning. Okay. First question. Are you lefty or a righty?

DUFFIE:
I'm a righty, but I am dyslexic, so jury's out.

ADRIANA:
Love it. Next question. Do you prefer iPhone or Android? iPhone. All right. Next one. Do you prefer Mac, Linux, or Windows?

DUFFIE:
Linux. All day. I've been a Linux on the desktop user for 20 something years.

ADRIANA:
Oh, damn. What's your what's your favorite distro?

DUFFIE:
My favorite distro. That's a tough one. I've been through so many. I think Arch is probably my current favorite because of the the community builds and everything else like that at work, however, when I'm at Cisco, I have to. I have to use Ubuntu, which I don't mind. It's a great distro as well, but but yeah, like for the, for the obscure kind of stuff that you need to make your desktop your own, I think Arch is really the great one.

ADRIANA:
Nice, nice. And, that is one thing like Linux does let you, play around a lot.

DUFFIE:
Almost to its detriment. Yes.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. That's true. My, my only, my only beef with with Linux and maybe it's improved. It's been a while... was like I couldn't get it to play with all the peripherals all the time. And when I used to have, like, you know, an iPhone that I had to connect to, to my computer to sync, or actually, before that, I had BlackBerry. I couldn't use the BlackBerry software to sync my BlackBerry in my Linux box. Sadly.

DUFFIE:
It's a challenge for sure. I mean, it's I was just recently. Speaking of geeking out, I'm also a motorcycle rider, and I was recently changing the programing of the computer that operates the motorcycle's fueling and electrical systems. And for that, I needed a Windows computer, because the only software that I could use to load the program onto the device that was doing the programing was the windows computer.

And so I again remembered how to do this with Vagrant. I spun up a Windows 11 machine, figured out how to do a USB passthrough, because I'm not going to install Windows just to try this out. Right? Like...

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah.

DUFFIE:
You know like but yeah, I feel you on the on the challenge of like being able to having to deal with stuff that sometimes it's, it's-- Windows is the only way. And...

ADRIANA:
Yes. But also you're like updating software on your motorcycle. Feel like you buried the lede there.

DUFFIE:
Well, it's interesting stuff. I mean, just like with motorcycles, actually, with most fuel injected vehicles, especially recent ones, they have an ECU that's responsible for like good timing in the fueling.

And and from the factory they come in this issue in this state where because of the way that the regulations work, they have to stay within a particular range of fueling and timing to remain underneath an emission thing, which does two things. I mean, I appreciate the emissions challenge, but the other part of it is that it causes the motorcycle to run very lean a lot of the time, which causes the motorcycle to run hot.

And actually you end up in this kind of like weird bad loop where the motorcycle can't really operate at efficiency. So it's continuing to run badly. And and if it were to able to run efficiently, it would actually run significantly more efficiently then the computer program allows for it. And so that was the change I was making, was allowing for the computer to actually learn from the sensors on the bike how efficiently it's running.

So it could actually do a better learning loop and operate correctly. Right. It's still in the the, the two that I put on this motorcycle is still a 50 state tune. If I had to go and get my exhaust checked, it would still pass.

It's just that it allows the motorcycle to be unrestricted in how it fuels and times the bike so that it's still it's still being very efficient, but it's not being held back by that regulation on it.

ADRIANA:
Got it. That's very cool. Speaking of... so, like, what do you what do you write that in?

DUFFIE:
Oh, I'm not sure. I didn't actually write this one. So this is all like, I so basically what I get back is a program that looks like a map, right? It looks a little bit like a graph. And the units on one side are perhaps things like, measurements of oxygen and, and measurements of temperature and things like that.

And on the other side we have like timing adjustment, like up or down and also fueling how much fueling. And you can think of this like a big heat map. Right. And what it's trying to do is it's trying to figure out a way to make it so that as you move through the power cycle of the motorcycle, it's creating a scenario where everything is fueled and timed correctly based on the temperature and the, oxygen levels being measured at the exhaust system.

ADRIANA:
Oh, cool.

DUFFIE:
Right. And so it's like, it's this and this is what I mean by that second, but it's kind of a closed loop system, they call it, because it's constantly measuring the situation at hand and trying to adjust timing and fuel based on that.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Yeah. That's so cool.

DUFFIE:
But I think it's probably written in C or, you know, something crazy because it's been around forever. Yeah, I feel like it's one of those industries ripe for disruption, but nothing is ever... it’s like, such a niche thing, you know?

ADRIANA:
So true, so true. Yeah. That's so cool. It isn't it wild to realize, I mean, I think we already know, deep in the back of our minds that computers run our vehicles, but it's still, like, kind of blows my mind.

DUFFIE:
It is a trip. Yeah. For sure. Like and it's funny there's there are still you can still find vehicles for which this is not true. Right. Like there's still plenty of vehicles out there that that are still, you know, carburated and all of that stuff. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah.

DUFFIE:
Like with, with fuel injection and all of that. It's really come a long way. Just a couple of years ago I bought my first all electric car and that's nothing but computers, right? Like there's. Other than the brakes, maybe, you know, like I.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

DUFFIE:
Yeah.

ADRIANA:
And speaking of electric cars, like, so I, I have a hybrid and when we, when we bought the hybrid, the first time I drove it and it was in electrical mode, I'm like, what's going on? There's no noise. Like it breaks your brain.

DUFFIE:
Yeah, it's a trippy thing. And then, you know, it's just a power powerband and everything. And then I thought when I bought this car, because I come from the, you know, like, I had, had a mini Cooper Clubman before this, and I had a Honda Element and a bunch of other cars that are great cars. But like, I thought that when I bought the electric car, I would have, like, range anxiety that I would be worried, like I would I would have this concern of like, am I going to be able to get to the next charging station?

You know, like, and really, it's not a thing in California in California where I, where I do all of my driving.

ADRIANA:
Right.

DUFFIE:
It's not a thing I have to worry about at all.

ADRIANA:
Right. Right. This is THE place to own an electric car.

DUFFIE:
Yeah. And also, the car goes 200 something miles on a charge.

ADRIANA:
Damn.

DUFFIE:
So it's not like, you know, it's not. It's not like. It's like that's about what a tank would have taken me.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

DUFFIE:
Right. Like I take a gas, so they're taking me about the same distance. So it's like it's already kind of like aligned with, like my mental picture of, like how far I can go before I have to deal with the gas thing.

ADRIANA:
That's great. And does your car charge fast?

DUFFIE:
It is. Yeah. It's like the 400 volt system or the 800 volt system or something. So I pull in to a fast charger and 20 minutes later from empty, I'm at like 80 or 90.

ADRIANA:
Oh that's pretty good. That's pretty good. I heard there's like some really cool technology out there in the world that allows you to, swap out car batteries. So then I guess it makes the, the experience a lot better so that you're not having to sit there, you know, waiting 20 minutes for for a charge, even.

DUFFIE:
I've heard of that one. I've also heard of like there's another one that I've seen or I haven't seen it, but I've heard it read about, which is like they put like a mat in your driveway or whatever. And then like, it's like wireless charging speeds.

ADRIANA:
Oh my god. Oh my god.

DUFFIE:
Right. Like overnight it would just wireless. It would be like your little mouse or whatever. It just wirelessly charge. But yeah, I haven't seen any of that in person. But it's pretty amazing.

ADRIANA:
Damn mind blown. Yeah, that is so trippy. Well, I could I could keep on asking questions about this, but, I'm going to move on to the next question in our series. Do you have favorite programing language?

DUFFIE:
Do I have a favorite programing language? Whew. That's tough. I will say Python.

ADRIANA:
I love Python. So, Team Python.

DUFFIE:
And and to qualify that I think I'll say Python because of IPython. I'm a, I'm a type of learner that I kind of need to be hands on. I need, I need to be able to ask questions, everything with my hands and like figure out how it works.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah.

DUFFIE:
And it really unlocked my ability to understand how programing works because like, you can write all kinds of crazy ways of transforming data dictionaries and all this other stuff. But unless you're able to, like, jump in and see what state it's in, like, did it work? Is it doing the thing I expect, like in an interactive way?

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

DUFFIE:
I have a hard time, like in my head, like putting together how it works. It's easier now with like structs in Go, like it's, it's like, it kind of like it makes it a little bit easier to understand what the data will with the shape the data will take. But like in Python, I feel like was the first one that really unlocked. Like being able to understand and being able to watch a program work through the different parts of the logical flow.

ADRIANA:
Right. Right. That's so cool. Love it. Okay. Next question. Do you prefer dev or ops?

DUFFIE:
I think I prefer ops, and the reason is like for me, a big part of the thing that gets me up in the morning, the thing that drives me to go and do it again is the people.

And so between dev and Ops I feel like dev frequently like we were, we are working on our own to build, to improve a piece of software or some piece of infrastructure or whatever it is. And we're, we're focused on that work and then like maybe once a day or perhaps like a couple times a week, we go and we meet each other and talk about what we're going to work together, etc..

And in ops, it's like a daily you're working in a team, right? Like it's you're handing off between the different parts of it and all that pretty constantly. And I feel like that's definitely more my speed of operations before for a number of different companies. But.

But yeah, like, I really like the, the people part of the puzzle as much as I like the technology. So I need both of those things to, to really feel like I'm doing the right work, you know?

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah. It's true, it's true. It's Yeah. You know, at the end of the day, it's it's so interesting. I feel like we all crave, like, human connection, a place to belong. And then finding, like, our people in our little like niche of work. Right. Is so, so important.

DUFFIE:
I completely agree. Yeah. And I feel like, you know, dev is the other where I feel like dev is challenging because like, it can feel very isolating, right? Like, I feel like in many ways. And some people are into that. Right. Like it takes all kinds. Right? Like some people... for them, like being able to really apply their whole self to that problem and move that problem along is all they need.

And that's great. Right.

DUFFIE:
But for me I need that multiple puzzle piece, you know like.

ADRIANA:
I totally feel ya. Yeah. It is interesting that dev really is a solo endeavor. Unless you do, you know, you do like,

programing or swarm programing, which I don't know. I'm, I'm too much of a control freak to do pair programing. And I'm, I'm the one who has to be on the driver's seat.

I've only paired successfully, like, with one friend, and it was like, you know, he he knew that I was the one who had to be in the driver's seat, and he, he he, he was happy to, to stay in the passenger seat, and it worked really well. But I don't know if I could do that with anyone else.

DUFFIE:
I'm curious if you have have tried doing, like, pair programing with, like, a computer or like, AI or something.

ADRIANA:
Oh, like vibe coding. I have not, I'm not not. Yeah. I wouldn't say I've tried vibe coding yet, but that's on my to do list

I finally, I feel like I finally have a project for vibe coding. Because I hate doing front-end. I'm allergic to front-end dev. Like, JavaScript lost me years ago.l

DUFFIE:
That is an entire thing. Like, oh yeah. Like completely with you on that. It’s like, you might understand databases and data manipulation, all this other stuff. And then you get in the front-end, you're like, what in the world is happening?

ADRIANA:
Exactly. Like, you lost me at JavaScript and CSS and like the fact that shit doesn't work for multiple browsers and like, no.

DUFFIE:
Oh my god. Yes. Right. Like, wow.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. So my my vibe coding project is build me a website. I like it because right now, like I host my my blog on medium and I'm happily doing that.

But like I have owned my own domain since I think 2000 and I've not. It's been a while since I've done anything with it. I think I might have had stuff on it a long time ago. Some like shitty static web page that has long since been taken down. This is my excuse. So yes, I, I, like you are so right though on on like pair programing... like, vibe coding is like pair programing with the AI. That's cool.

Okay. Next question in the series, do you prefer JSON or YAML?

DUFFIE:
JSON or YAML? Wow. Well, I was, you know, a few years ago, I was working with Rory McCune, Ian Coldwater, and Brad Geesaman, and we were looking at a, an exploit on YAML which allows for a multiple multiple application attack where, it was called “Billion Laughs”. It's a really fun CVE in the Kubernetes CVE history.

And what this would do is in YAML, there's this idea that you can take a, an anchor and then copy and then generate code based on that anchor, where you apply it within your YAML file. And there was no upper bound set on the expansion of the anchor. So what the submit was that like, you could actually like submit a very small YAML file that would result in an expansion of memory and the API server cut it off all over.

ADRIANA:
Well down.

DUFFIE:
So there is no such thing in JSON. Like there's no like expansion idea in JSON. This is a feature only of the YAML of the only of the YAML thing, so I don't know which one I prefer. I'd say that YAML is probably easier on the human, and JSON is definitely easier on the computer.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, I can see that. I could see that. Yeah, I find YAML easier on the eyes. I found the curly braces of JSON like too much for me. It's just it's noise.

DUFFIE:
Yeah. And if you don't have like if you don't have some kind of ID to tell you when you're blowing it, it's really very difficult to write.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

DUFFIE:
Like but it's also interesting that JSON that YAML has these like challenges like, like it'll, it'll determine it, like a boolean value is different than, you know, is detected as a YAML feature rather than as a Boolean value. And like the date thing, there's, there's a bunch of weird little peccadilloes about YAML that make it maybe not quite incompatible, but certainly not the perfect tool for what we use it for.

Where you apply quotes and where you don't. And how do you escape sequences and like oh yeah. Oh my gosh. There's so many things.

ADRIANA:
Quotes. Yeah, yeah. The quotes, the quotes, the dam quotes. It's like, do you like quotes? Do you not like quotes?

DUFFIE:
I came across a very interesting problem leveraging YAML in, Ansible, the other day. And I was because I was trying to basically create a string that actually had quotes in it, and I was having the hardest time getting, Ansible to do the right thing in templating. It was actually using Jinja, really at the end of the day.

But like, I couldn't get you to do the thing I was trying to get it to do because of the escaping. And then I finally figured out that they, they have actually built a function called unsafe.

ADRIANA:
Oh.

DUFFIE:
And they were just like, mark this particular string unsafe. And they're like, just don't interpret it. Just put it in and just put it in and and take it out and like don't try to play with it. Don't try to understand what it says. Just use this string as I have given it to you and it works great now.

ADRIANA:
Wow that's great.

DUFFIE:
Absolutely amazing. Life changing, right? Because like trying to manipulate. I was like, is it three single quotes and then a double quote, is it like like I'm trying to figure out how to make this work. And I could not get it, and then finally I found “unsafe”.

ADRIANA:
Oh my God, I gotta love the name too. Unsafe. Yeah. Oh my God, yay software people. Okay, next question. Do you prefer spaces or tabs?

DUFFIE:
I prefer that my tab presents as two spaces.

ADRIANA:
Because of the YAML shit. That's honestly why I started like converting my tabs into spaces in VS code is because of YAML. I still like YAML over JSON though. For all its shortcomings.

DUFFIE:
For sure.

ADRIANA:
Okay, two more questions. Are you more of a video or text person for learning stuff?

DUFFIE:
Ooh, tricky. I think it depends on what I'm learning actually. So I think if I learning programing or learning a new language or learning some new tricks about that language, I'll typically read it or I'll typically like, find a program, a sufficiently advanced program written in the language that I want to learn, and then go see how they do it and figure out, like, the different little challenges that they run into and how they solve them, and like, kind of dig into it from that perspective.

But I'm always looking for stuff like the pragmatic this or like, you know, 101 weird problems with ECS. You know, like, I'm always looking for that kind of content to understand what's happening. Like, there's a great article, that a good friend wrote that was, that was writing about about the language that, like, describes all the weird stuff that you don't really expect, like shadow copies and like that kind of stuff.

So that's reading. But then on the learning. So I'm, I'm a Rubik’s cuber. I play with Rubik's cubes all the time. It's like one of my, one of the things I picked up during the pandemic.

ADRIANA:
Oh, cool.

DUFFIE:
And for that, I feel like I need to watch somebody solve using a particular algorithm a couple times and then I can then I can try it manually. Yeah. And then and then once I start doing it manually, then it's like a manual memory and I can actually remember it. Right? Yeah. Actually I think it depends on what I'm learning.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. That makes sense. That makes sense I yeah, I, I feel like... try to solve a Rubik's cube by reading instructions. This would be so hard. Yeah.

DUFFIE:
It's really, I mean, and that's how it was for a long time. I mean, there was the Rubik's cubes were around before YouTube, right?

ADRIANA:
Like, yeah, that's true. That's so true. Yeah. I mean, the stuff we take for granted, honestly, like, it just blows my mind. You know, like the other day I was watching, the show on Apple TV+ called Constellation. I don't know if you've seen it yet. Really good. Really good sci fi. But they, when the characters had, like, it's she was it's it's like, you know, like current current day.

But she had she had a cassette tape and someone had sent her cassette tape and my thought was, how the fuck is she going to play this cassette tape? Right. And she had like, a toy, like cassette tape player, I guess that her kid had, and that's how she played the cassette tape and I'm like, damn, you know, like, I'm thinking back, I think I got rid of my last tape player.

I don't know, like five years ago when I moved. And I've got, like, I don't have an actual dedicated CD player. I've got a couple of, like, external CD drives sitting under my desk for just in case. It's I mean, all these are these things that we used to rely on, like just gone. I remember handing in, like, my homework in university on floppy disks.

DUFFIE:
Or Zip drives. Remember zip drives? So that was like even a shorter flash in the sun, right? Like that was like.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, that was very short lived. I it was so short lived that I never owned a Zip drive.

DUFFIE:
Yeah. So it's one thing though, my experience with Zip drives, which was funny, it was like I worked at Juniper for about six and a half years, and Juniper builds routers and routers and switches, and some of those routers were built during the period of time when flash drives were a thing. Yeah. And so like to load software onto the router.

There was a class of router. I can’t remember which one it is. But there's like some there's some Juniper router that it actually uses Zip drives. So load the operating system into the router. And we and you know this is in like 2006, 2007. So we're there and like and like we're we're like trolling eBay trying to find flash drives.

ADRIANA:
Like because.

DUFFIE:
Because like even working at Juniper, like nobody's selling them new anymore. Right? Like you're... old stock so we can keep these routers alive. It was amazing.

ADRIANA:
Holy crap. Okay, final question. We've reached our final question of the icebreaker questions. What is your superpower?

DUFFIE:
Like superpower? I think when you ask other people what my superpower is, it's that I am able to communicate complicated things in a way that is easy to understand.

I think my superpower is that, you know, we all have our own challenges. And one of the challenges that I have is like, I, I, I had a series of experiences that really taught me that I have to think about perspective differently.

And that means that if I'm looking at a problem, I can only ever understand the problem with my own faculties, my own eyes, my own brain, my own hands. I can only understand it so far. And that's and that's limited by my experience. Right. But but what I've been through before, whatever it is, however, if I try and teach that thing, then I get exposed to the faculties of others, right?

They might say, what happens if this happens? What happens if that happens? Hey, have you thought about this? You know, like what? What happens when this other part happens? And I'm like, and those for me are like the most valuable thing. So in a way that's my superpower is I don't rest on the idea of a single perspective.

ADRIANA:
Ooh, I like that. That's very cool. And so, so important because I it, it made me think back to like, yeah, my, my husband's also in tech. And so I'll... and we're in different different areas. And so I'll be telling him about some of the stuff that I'm, I'm working on. And then he'll start asking questions because it's not his area.

And, and I'm like, oh, and I don't... I have I have to say I almost get annoyed. Because I'm like, why are you thinking about it that way? And it's like, but then I have to kind of take a step back and think, of course, he's thinking it that way because he's approaching it from a completely different angle. So yeah. Yeah.

DUFFIE:
Exactly. Yeah. It's always I mean, it's it's such a trippy thing that I feel like all of us bring there's a number of different like concepts that talk about this. Right. Like one of them is the idea of the beginner's mind. Right. In the beginner's mind, all things are possible in the expert's mind. Very few.

But there's, there's a ton of different like concepts that, that speak about this as it relates to people and I love and I love the whole idea that like, you know, we each bring our own perspective to a set of problems, whether that problem is related to humans, whether that problem is related to coding, whether that problem is related to logic.

We we each have a built up over our, our journey, you know, like a different set of understandings and expectations about how these things work. Yeah. And being open to that is huge. Right. Like that's I think probably the biggest skill of a teacher that we don't really talk about is that like being open to those perspectives that are not their own is such a huge thing.

ADRIANA:
It really is because it, it, it opens so many doors.

DUFFIE:
Yeah. In your own brain and everybody else's brain, like, it's like, you know, it's like we, you know, we are you and I, we're both talking about, like, lifelong learning. I think we were talking about this. So lifelong learning is when you're in tech, you're constantly learning, you know. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

DUFFIE:
I feel like that's a big piece of it too, right. Like the way we're way to really actively engage in that is to think about it, think about the limitations of perspective.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. And I think, you know, going staying on that lifelong learner topic, you can't I feel like you can't be in tech and not be a lifelong learner. And expect your career to progress. And I think that being open to different perspectives is what allows that to happen, because I think people who jumped on to like any anytime you're jumping onto new tooling or new concepts like getting, you know, open your mind around DevOps, like what you're telling me, I have to like, do my work differently. Like it's hard, it's scary.

DUFFIE:
Totally true. Yeah, yeah, I think I mean, even even outside of tech, I think that's true. Right? If you're if you're a chef, you're oh my god. Yeah. You're a hairstylist. You're like any number of different things for you to really progress.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. And certainly anything artistic I mean you can't just be like okay with the status quo. Can you imagine? No evolution. How boring. How boring.

DUFFIE:
Nope. Yeah. Wild stuff.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Well, we got through all the all the icebreaker questions with who? Thanks for playing along. I have so many questions because. So, actually, there's one thing I want to touch upon because you mentioned earlier on, that you're dyslexic. And, I was wondering because my, my husband's, dyslexic as well. And, so for him, like, one of the things that I've learned because, I'm, I'm, I'm a fast reader, I guess certainly compared to him and I it it has taught me being married to him that if I'm showing him something, I have to be super patient, as and respectful of the pace in which he reads.

And he talks about a lot about, coping mechanisms, as being as a dyslexic person,

DUFFIE:
My experience is very different than your husband’s. I imagine that, like, everything is on the spectrum at some point.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Of course.

DUFFIE:
When I was, when I was coming up, I failed the second grade, and my mom figured out that the reason I was failing was that I was dyslexic and the school didn't have the wherewithal to make that assumption or make that, assessment themselves. And so my mom went to learn how to teach a dyslexic kid how to read, and she taught me to read.

And then after that, I was I was at a I was reading at a collegiate level, like very quickly, like, I, I understood how this worked. It was game on, you know.

ADRIANA:
Damn! That's awesome.

DUFFIE:
And like you at this point, like if I'm looking at a page of text, I have to I would have to actively not read it.

Right. Like I'm already processing the data on that page. Just have it. Just having it in my vision.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

DUFFIE:
I'm not thinking about like I'm not thinking about the process. I'm not like and I can read log files looking for a particular thing. It's like it's one of those. It's like a, it's an incredibly quick way of getting information into your brain. But like but but it's definitely a skill, right. Like it's. It's a trippy thing.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. That's so cool. It's, it's cool that you got, like, a diagnosis or at least, I guess, recognition, early on in life because my, my husband was, he, he had the experience where I think it was he never even got, like, a formal diagnosis. It was like after, you know, a long time of struggling.

And I guess reading enough stuff online where he's like, oh, shit, I think I might actually be dyslexic. And it, it tracks and it his experience was such a negative one where it's like, you know, the, the teachers would like, harp on him over like, oh, you're not applying yourself and like, you’re too slow, and blah blah blah.

And, and you know, kind of, he was, almost dismissed. He bet on himself. But like, and computers kind of saved him, but like, it was no thanks to, you know, people who didn't recognize that at the time. So kudos to your mom for like, really...

DUFFIE:
Oh my gosh.

ADRIANA:
Helping. My god.

DUFFIE:
Yeah. I can't, you know, I can't it's it's a it's such a wild thing to think about, but like, I can't imagine that not working out the way that it did because like, where would I be? You know, like, I don't even know what life would look like if I had if my mom had not figured that out in the time that she did, like, help me out.

It’s wild. You know, like one of those. What? It's one of those turning points that happens so early in the, in the, in the maze that you're like like, oh, like, how else would that have gone?

ADRIANA:
Yeah, right?

DUFFIE:
It's crazy.

ADRIANA:
It's trippy. Yeah. So kudos. That's amazing. Yeah. Thanks for sharing. Another thing that I wanted to ask, you mentioned, so you said you're so were you born in Hawaii, or you grew up in Hawaii, or both?

DUFFIE:
I was born in California.

ADRIANA:
Okay.

DUFFIE:
And my parents, my parents were never, like, kind of, like, really together. Like, my father and my mother were like, together, and they were traveling together for quite a while, but they were never really, like, a long term thing. And, so my mother and my stepfather met and they met and they married. And then basically about a year after that, when I was. I think eight, and my sister was four, we moved to Hawaii because that's where they wanted to be.

ADRIANA:
Nice.

DUFFIE:
And I was in Hawaii from when I was eight until, basically just around high school, like middle school, high school ten, and then moved back to California to live with my dad, and then kind of went back and forth between California and Hawaii for several years. Yeah. To, in like visiting my mom, or coming back to live with my dad.

And I remember, like, all these weird little culture shock. So, for example, one of the first times back to California to live with my dad, the first time, he was living here in San José, he was living down in San José, and we had, I had this wild experience. So in Hawaii, it's always been very expensive. A lot of food you have to get in, right?

ADRIANA:
Right.

DUFFIE:
Go into the grocery store with 20 bucks. It's not going to end up with a lot of groceries. Even at the time, like in in the early 90s or the early late 80s, it was still very expensive.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

DUFFIE:
And so, having that experience of, like, being able to go into a grocery store in San José, like a big, Big Saver or whatever, right, and walk out with a grocery cart full of food for 20 bucks was mind blowing.

ADRIANA:
Oh, wow.

DUFFIE:
As a teenage boy, I'm like, this is not making sense to me right now. But it was like it was it was such a crazy thing, you know, like having that experience of like, wow, this like the, you know, understanding the economic climate of different areas and like realizing that while the different like or even gas, the price of gas in Hawaii was always more expensive than the price... I remember gas in California, being as cheap is like, not... less than a buck.

ADRIANA:
Wow.

DUFFIE:
Never a thing in Hawaii. Like...

ADRIANA:
That is wild. It's so cool, though, that it, it kind of it teaches you different perspectives and gives you an appreciation as well for those things.

DUFFIE:
These are some of those experiences that I was talking about that really drove me to think that, like that perspective is... That perspective is more important than your own, right?

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And and, out of curiosity, like what got you into tech?

DUFFIE:
So when I was in high school, I got into computers, and I was one of the people who kind of understood compu-- like my brain has always just kind of understand, have understood how computers work pretty well.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

DUFFIE:
And so I was like the teacher's aide in the computer class, and I was getting into, like, all the all the different things from that perspective. And I was also into theater at the time. So I was I it was technical theater. So doing lights, sound, staging, working all of that stuff. And so interestingly, both of these two fields involve technology.

And so I think that really kind of like became a through line for me was like working in different, technical fields. So, like whether that was, for, for years when I was working in Hawaii, I was doing lighting, sound, staging, rigging, and I was always, you know, working at that part of the tech. Because in Hawaii, if you're not working in the tourism industry in some way, you're not working, right?

ADRIANA:
Right, right.

DUFFIE:
It’s really hard.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah.

DUFFIE:
And so when I came to California and I was like, you know, I'm already pretty good with my computer already, like exploring Linux, already exploring Windows. And I was kind of like playing with all the different operating systems and how all they were, they all work and all that stuff. I started getting into systems administration.

And I went from systems administration into network administration because again, that's one of those like, things I really wanted to know how all of that worked. Yeah. And so best way for me to understand how all that worked was to go and play with it, like to go to work on it like. So that was network administration, systems administration... I first broke into real tech when I... and.... just before the year 2000 and I joined a couple of companies that were, that were providing DSL. There were DSL wholesalers. So they, Covad and NorthPoint communications were, were the two that I joined, and both of them were tremendous experiences because they were both. In in Covad

I was actually out doing physical installations of DSL. There's all kinds of crazy stories related to that. And then at NorthPoint, I went inside and I was doing customer support, and I was actually answering phone calls of installers and also customers who were trying to understand why their thing wasn't working or how to get this turned on or etc.

And so I went from like customer support up into the architecture level pretty quickly because I understood how these systems work pretty, pretty well, and I was able to communicate it and teach it and share it. I became like my path to, kind of a higher I don't know if like a more senior role or, or really gave me an opportunity to kind of jump into different parts of the system because I was able to teach and bring people with me.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. And it's such a wonderful feeling when you're able to, like, get through to people, right? Through...

DUFFIE:
Seeing the light come on? It's amazing.

ADRIANA:
The network stuff that you were doing. Was it all like, self-taught or like, how did you, come to learn it?

DUFFIE:
A lot of it was self-taught. A lot of it was actually also, exploring how things work based, like there's always been a number of different technologies out there, like GNS, graphical network simulator. Where you can actually like, you know, on a reasonably inexpensive computer, you know, build their whole research lab and explore this stuff. And Kubernetes, there's KinD, right? Kubernetes, Kubernetes in Docker. It's another great example. You don't need you don't need to have an Amazon account to be able to play with Kubernetes. You can play with it in Docker on your laptop, right?

Those particular types of things have always been around for people who want to play with them and understand how how different parts work and understand different protocols and understand how to build adjacencies and how to troubleshoot them, like those things have been around for a long time, whether they were KinD or whether they were, GNS, or like, things like this.

And so that's that's always been kind of like I'm about to let my curiosity like, what happens if I'm trying to convert from, you know, BGP to OSPF. Like, I don't know, let's let's try it.

ADRIANA:
So yeah. So you've basically gravitated towards networking for for a chunk of your career then. Is that is that accurate.

DUFFIE:
Yeah, I think networking, distributed systems, people, it's always been one thing or another. I've worked on a variety of different technology efforts across a variety of different companies. I helped build the first shared infrastructure at Apple and it was great. It was called PIE, Platform Infrastructure Engineering. So “apple pie”, you know.

We were so proud of that name.

ADRIANA:
Oh my God. That's so cool. How was it working at Apple?

DUFFIE:
I think as with many big companies, I think Apple has an incredible opportunity to go and work with some of the and do some of the best work of your life.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

DUFFIE:
If you find yourself in the right group working with the right people, putting you, you know, giving you the right opportunity and really letting you kind of like, grow into that. I think that you can really find that at Apple. You can also find the opposite experience where, like, you come in with this, a bit, perhaps, it's not even really about what you bring to it. Sometimes that you're just you're in a situation where it's just untenable and it's not going to work for you, and you're going to need to go somewhere else and go find another opportunity somewhere else.

And I think that's true of most big companies. You find these little pockets of areas where you can really do the best work for your life, and sometimes you find pockets where that's just not a possibility. It's really hard.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. And the, it, sometimes it just boils down. I mean, yes, there's the, there's the company culture, but also like, just finding the right team, the one where it feels like home. Which can be such a challenge.

DUFFIE:
Yeah. Where the people believe in you. Where they where you where you get to really, like, come into your own and shine and like, it's it's an amazing experience, but I, I really in many ways I wish there were some way of. Kind of guaranteeing that for people or.

ADRIANA:
I know. Right. It's so true. Like sorry. Good.

DUFFIE:
Yeah. It's it's one of those things that like I do feel like the Kubernetes community does pretty good at this. There's other communities out there that do pretty good at this where they're like, like we know everybody had to be new at some point, and we want to make it so that in your time as being new, you have somebody to ask questions of, like, how do we build that community?

Which is really the crux of the community problem. Like, how do we build that community to enable you to feel like you're not an imposter, to make you feel like your contributions are valuable, that your questions are valid, that you're you're not just that you're not alone in this. You're trying you're not trying to run up this hill by yourself. There's a bunch of us running beside you. You know what I mean?

ADRIANA:
Like it's so true. It's so true. And I think, like, there, there. Certain, as you said, certain communities that make it so, so easy to do that, that kind of give you that safe space. You know, I think back to like some of the nasty shit you see on StackOverflow where you're like, I'm just asking a question. And then they're like questioning your whole, like, existence.

And you're like, hey, I just want an answer.

DUFFIE:
And and the stress of all of this, I mean, even like the, the stress about this also really affects how people react or are able to spend time. Right? Like, if I like,

I've definitely run into situations where like I'm asking somebody a question and they're very resistive to the question because they feel that their interpretation of this question is I'm calling into validity, whether the thing you did was right or wrong.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

DUFFIE:
I'm like, no, I, I there's no right or wrong. But but but other. But how they internalize that question is... that I have no control over. I can say like hey man, I think you did the absolute best you could with the information that you had at the time, 1,000% every time. Otherwise you probably wouldn't have done it right.

But yeah, it's, it's, it's a challenging it's this is that people puzzle right. Like how do you, how do you communicate effectively when what you're, when the words you're using may be interpreted as a challenge. As opposed to just a question. Right. Like, I seek to understand.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Yeah. And I think and I think, you know, to, to your credit and your superpower, having that perspective, can be extremely helpful because it probably primes you better to not have that resistance when, when someone comes at you with a question like that, that you know. Yeah.

DUFFIE:
Right. Like, you know, being able to prime the other person and say like, you know, first of all, let's let's play it out. I'm not trying to like, challenge the decisions that you’ve made.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah.

DUFFIE:
Let's trying to understand how it works. And you're the best person to ask because your name is on the good committee.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Right. Yeah.

DUFFIE:
Take me on that journey. Right.

ADRIANA:
Like it's true. Yeah. It's all about disarming, right? It's funny because, you know, I've, I've, I've said this to so many people, like contributing, especially contributing to open source can be so, so daunting, especially like very well-established projects. Right. Where you've got, like your, your old guard and you're like, oh my God, dare I? Dare I throw my hat into the ring?

DUFFIE:
I feel like, you know, it's definitely... it's, it is absolutely one of those situations where, like, the longest journey begins with a single step, you know.

And the other part of this that I wanted to call back to on the whole perspective, which I think is an interesting thing for people to hear.

Some people feel like if they learn a programing language, and then the next programing language comes out, that everything that they did was lost work.

And one thing I've learned in my career is that there is no lost work. Like that, that everything that you have been through, every part of your experience has set you up for success moving forward. Like if you know how to troubleshoot networks, what you’re troubleshooting is a distributed system.

And you could apply a lot of the same brain logic to the problem of understanding why databases aren't redistributing, that you could, to understanding why, a network problem exists or a network partition exists.

I call this like, building intuition. You're, you're constantly building intuition because you're solving problems at different levels of a stack or solving problems even within the same stack. Your, your problem solving skills are what you're building. That's the thing you take with you, regardless of where you're going next.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that that's what people need to remember. Even, you know, one of the things that I always tell people, from a coding perspective is like, never fall in love with your code, right? Because, like, yeah, you write something and then someone else is gonna look at your code and build on it and make it better.

And, like, isn't that the ultimate compliment? Someone, someone is inspired by something you've done and then thought of another way to like a way to improve it.

DUFFIE:
Oh my gosh, just add this KubeCon in London. There was a great talk that was talking about, kind of changing the way that we think about security and applications and stuff and, and it was neat because they based their talk on a talk that I had done with Brad and Rory and Ian in Amsterdam.

ADRIANA:
Oh, cool.

DUFFIE:
They, they took the idea of it and they were like, well, let's take it further. Let's understand container scanning even further than what they jumped into. Right. And I was like, I love that. Right?

ADRIANA:
Like, yeah.

DUFFIE:
Take the idea further. When I was a kid, there was this Creative Whack Pack. There was this set of ideas, and one of the things that they put in that pack was, don't ever fall in love with an idea. But it's just it's kind of a corollary to what you're saying about falling in love with your code, right?

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

DUFFIE:
The mental path you took to get to this idea isn't the only one we have. We all can agree on that.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, it's it's never it's never a waste like, you know, I, I, I'm, I consider myself a serial blogger. And oftentimes all like up there is the last blog post I wrote, I started writing, I had finished writing it, I and then I started like reviewing the, the the copy and I think the last thing that I had was like a conclusion to write and, and I'm writing out the conclusion and I'm reviewing the copy and I'm like, oh shit, I framed this blog post as X, but I kind of buried the lede and I need to reframe it and, and then, you know, I it wasn't a complete gutting, but there is definitely like a lot of rework. And whenever stuff like that happens, I just tell myself, like, it's okay. Because what you're doing is making it better. So even if you like, delete an entire section, entire paragraph or whatever, it's totally fine because what's coming out is going to be way better than what you had before.

DUFFIE:
Exactly. Yeah, yeah. I love I mean, even the idea of challenging your own, it's like part of not falling in love with code or not falling in love with an idea is, is giving yourself that room to grow, right?

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

DUFFIE:
Giving yourself that permission to say, actually, I've been thinking about this all wrong.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah.

DUFFIE:
You don’t need somebody else will tell you that. Like, you can tell you that too, right?

ADRIANA:
Being kind to yourself by giving yourself permission. Absolutely. And it's all part of the creative process. I wanted to switch gears a little bit and talk about, your current role, at Isovalent, which was acquired, I guess, semi-recently by Cisco. So how did you, how did you come to, work at Isovalent, and talk to a little bit about the work that you do.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

DUFFIE:
So I, quite a few years ago now, I worked for a company called Nicira, which was a network virtualization company, and it was a fascinating role because it was I had just come from Juniper Networks, where I was, lab manager.

And so I spent like, basically, I think it was like 5 or 6 years or something at Juniper, learning every possible way to break a network at any type of scale.

And then I come to, to Nicira where I am, working on working with the team and developing network virtualization. And my part of that opportunity was like, how do I how can I bring this skill set that I have learned in troubleshooting networks to, this problem of building network virtualization?

So, like, in real... in “real” networks, right? Non-virtual networks, I should say. Like, there are things that I know how to... that I'm like, are ingrained in my mind about troubleshooting and understanding the state of the network as it relates to, like how all things are operating.

When they're building a network virtualization model, like we need we need similar tools. I still need to know when things are propagating. I still need to understand the state of that network, whether it's virtual or real. And so it was this fascinating role where I'm like working with a team that's developing all of this software and saying, I need to know how this works.

I need to understand when this happens. I need to, you know, just bring my real world experience from troubleshooting networks to this new virtual arena. And that was just a great role. I had a wonderful time. And at that job I met Dan Whitland. Who is the CEO of Isovalent.

ADRIANA:
Nice.

DUFFIE:
And I also met Thomas Graff, who at the time was a contributor to Open vSwitch, which was one of the open source projects that came out of Nicira as well. And so, Dan and I have been friends the entire time, like we've known. We run into each other at different conferences. We're always good, glad to see each other.

Etcetera. And so when, I decided to leave, so I was like, you know, I'm from Nicira, I did a bunch of other stuff. I went to Apple, I went to a company called Illumio. When I decided to leave Apple, I decided to kind of jump into Kubernetes because I saw this really incredible opportunity within the Kubernetes space.

ADRIANA:
Nice.

DUFFIE:
Having lived through the OpenStack days, I was like, oh, this is this is going to happen again, and it's going to be Kubernetes and it's going to be really fascinating to watch. And so I reached out to CoreOS. I said, you should hire me. They said, why? I said, just try it. And they interviewed me and I got the job. I worked at CoreOS, and then at Heptio.

And then after Heptio was acquired into VMware. I decided to leave VMware. I went, and then, at that time, I was chatting with, Dan, who had built Isovalent at that point. At that point, and Isovalent getting to a place where they were like, really going after the market.

And I decided that I wanted to go and do like a field CTO role. And I sibilant, and so I went to dad and I said, and I pitched it, you know, I'm like, hey, this is what I'd like to do for Isovalent. Are you interested in this?

And at this point, I'd already at Heptio and at CoreOS, built a very public persona around learning and engaging in technology and engaging an open source, which, you know, which is a big part of myself and a big part of what I've given to the community over the years. And I said, you know, I'd like to keep doing that.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

DUFFIE:
But I'd also like to be part of, like, you know, a customer facing role doing, sales, engineering and that sort of stuff. So we built a role called Field CTO, and that's where I came into at Isovalent.

ADRIANA:
Oh, cool.

DUFFIE:
And I was there for the longest I've ever been at a startup, actually. Cause like, the startups that I joined have, have either been acquired within a year or, or something around that space, which is, I will admit, a weird little humblebrag. I'm not trying to say [...] that [...]. Right. But like, but I think as it all works out, like I have a, you know, most of the startups I, I've been a part of have, except for, with the exception of Illumio have been acquired within a period of time.

When I first joined Isovalent, I did think that Isovalent was going to be another one of those, like, year long journeys.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

DUFFIE:
But then the pandemic happened. Actually it was in the pandemic when I joined. And then, you know, navigating all of that over the period of about, I think it was pretty close to three years when we were acquired.

ADRIANA:
All right.

DUFFIE:
Which is, you know, an incredible journey, incredible time as a startup, building the business from a, you know, from a very successful open source project to a reasonably successful enterprise product and a really kind of growing year over year. And, you know, and then helping uh, hire and helping train people and helping level people up in the technology and that space for doing a lot of public work around all of that.

And now, after the acquisition, continuing to be very successful within Cisco. Isovalent is continuing to be, to grow crazily. And I think it's one of the most successful acquisitions I've ever been a part of, in that even after a year and a half, nothing... I'm still excited to go and work on that.

Because it's changing, because it's the same team, because it's, because the people are still here. We're still moving. We're still, like, learning from our experience. We're still growing as a company within Cisco. We have just an incredible opportunity. And it's it's been it's been really, it's been amazing to just like, it's amazing to me that like, even after a year and a half, I'm still excited about doing it because, like in the past when CoreOS was acquired by RedHat,

I left, and went to Heptio. When Heptio was acquired by VMWare, I left, because I felt like that when the whole Pivotal acquisition happened, I was like, yeah, this is not for me.

When Nicira was acquired by VMware, we were like, oh, we have to rewrite everything. And I'm like, yeah, I'm going to go. And like...

So after a year to be able to say so I'm just as committed to this role, just as committed to this opportunity as I was in the first year at Isovalent is such a radically different experience than I've had at any other acquisition that it's just... I feel very fortunate.

ADRIANA:
I mean, acquisitions can be so tricky, right? I mean, there's nothing like a culture killer if, if not done properly.

DUFFIE:
Like, in the Isovalent case, you're hiring 160 people.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah.

DUFFIE:
And you need and you need to make sure that you have in that, in that hiring. What are they going to do? What's the vision? How does it apply to the overall vision. Like what is... like how do you keep them motivated? As a startup it's pretty easy. It's like, be motivated or die, right? Like it's not going to work if you don't.

We're not all working on the same thing. But like, but within a large company like Cisco, you're like, okay, well now here's the thing that we're working on that is part of moving all of Cisco forward. And here's, and, and is that interesting to the 160 people that joined? Like, is it validating their assumptions? Is it like, driving them forward?

Like, it's so hard to do is an acquisition. I feel like so many of them fail because there’s not really, there's no concise story vision, that really helps people who are coming into that scenario understand what the way forward is.

ADRIANA:
And I think that's the, that's the hardest part is like, do you, do you know where you fit in in the greater scheme of things and you feel like you're, you're you're I don't know, like it's almost this feeling of claustrophobia. Right. The parent company is like engulfing the, the acquired company and and do you maintain your, your culture. How do you integrate with the existing culture. Like that's a lot of,

DUFFIE:
A lot of really interesting problems. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
Isovalent is also known for, like, eBPF. Do you dabble... do anything in that, on that side of things? Just out of curiosity?

DUFFIE:
I do. Most of the time I spend my time on the frameworks that we're building. So things like, Cillium and, and, Tetragon. Tetragon is an incredible way of actually like, like if you have a problem that you want to solve with eBPF, Tetragon is a good framework for thinking about how to implement that.

ADRIANA:
Nice.

DUFFIE:
And you could definitely check out more about it at like Tetragon.io. But like I, I spent a lot of my time like helping people understand how that that might work. Like if you say, I want to do this, and I want to I want to have these outcomes, and I want to make this change, like, how do you how do I do that with Tetragon? I'm happy to help figure that part out.

I also spend a lot of my time just helping people understand Kubernetes and how networking works and all that other stuff.

DUFFIE:
Within Kubernetes, so much of the networking is abstracted away from your your day to day use. You're not thinking about, okay, how do I get this pod an IP address? Not on your mind at all. Right.

You might ask, how do I get traffic from outside into my application, right. Thinking oh, it's a load balancer. Right. How that creates, I don't know.

I'm not thinking about how how all of this works in the, in between. Right. And that's, that's the fun part for me is that I'm, you know, something of an expert in that part of it. Like how does that infrastructure part work.

And to be clear, like I'm defining expert as someone who can take other people and make them proficient at a thing. That's, in my mind, what an expert is. Not somebody who knows all the answers.

ADRIANA:
That's such a great definition. Man, if we knew all the answers, we would be rich! Alas, ‘tis not the case. I did ask, do you... are you actually a Kubernetes contributor as well?

DUFFIE:
I have in the past contributed. Mostly I contributed to the Kubeadm project, at the time. I was, I was working on Kubeadm. I've also worked on, contributed to Kubernetes in general and some of the docs I've contributed to, obviously to Cillium and to, other projects like in the space, like I contributed a little bit to Flux and to different things.

ADRIANA:
Oh, nice. That's cool.

DUFFIE:
But yeah, I think, but yeah, I mean, lately I haven't been contributing much because I've been focused on trying to help navigate this crazy big acquisition piece into into Cisco.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Fair enough, fair enough. Makes sense. Cool. Well, we are coming up on time. But before we wrap up, I was wondering if you have any words of wisdom for our audience?

DUFFIE:
I'll definitely reiterate that understanding a problem from multiple perspectives is a is a multiplier for your understanding and for your career. So being in a situation where you say, not only am I not in love with an idea, but I want to understand how you understand the idea. Really changes, really, really helps you grow.

The other one is make room for things to be hard. They don't have to be... Not everything is easy for everybody. Things that you assume are the easiest in the world. They're so obvious. It's not even things you have to think about. These things are true for you because of your experience, and everybody has a different experience, right?

So like, yeah, we were just talking about this earlier. Your husband has dyslexia and with the way you described his journey with dyslexia is so wildly different from my own that it may seem to me I'm like, well, why was that so hard? Like, I wouldn't say that, but you get what I'm saying, right? Like a wildly different perspective of, like.

You know, everybody, everywhere you look, you will see this difference in perspective.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Different perspectives, different journeys. Right?

DUFFIE:
Right? Yeah. I love that.

ADRIANA:
These are great words of wisdom. Also I cannot end the recording without doing a shout out to your awesome t-shirt, because... hello? It’s our podcast mascot. So I've got, and I was showing you earlier, I've got this little desk lamp that you could squeeze. Tee hee! It's so great. If I could, I would totally have one as a pet.

Well, thank you so much, Duffie, for, geeking out with me. And y'all, don't forget to subscribe and be sure to check our show notes to connect with us and our guests on social media. Until next time.

DUFFIE:
Peace out and geek out.

ADRIANA:
Geeking Out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Villela. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking Out is also produced by my daughter, Hannah Maxwell, who incidentally designed all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the socials by going to bento.me/geekingout.

The One Where We Geek Out on Podcasting with Mandy Moore

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Adriana Villela, Mandy Moore) — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 04:00:00 +0000

Key takeaways:

The secret sauce to a successful podcast is consistency, connection, and continuing to show up.
Podcasting work continues long after the recording is done
If you keep showing up with that same level of honesty and value, you're not just building an audience, you're building a community.
It's important to lead communities with clarity and care, by not just starting conversations, but also holding space for people.
Good social media marketing isn't about going viral. It's about showing up consistently with something real to say.
Social is a 2-way street. It's about posting and engaging with your audience.
Every line in social media copy has a job to do, and it has to grab your audience's attention in 1-2 seconds.
Platform fluency matters. What works in one social media platform might not work in another.
Great copy is part psychology, part storytelling and part restraint.
AI is a useful tool for writing, but it does not replace one's "writing voice".
You can and should be repurposing content, because not everyone will see all of your posts all of the time.
Being a working mom in tech means that there's no off switch. You have to communicate clearly, be efficient, and make peace with not being polished all the time.

About our guest:

Mandy Moore is a seasoned marketer, podcast producer, and storyteller with over 15 years of experience helping tech companies and creative brands build content that actually connects. She's the voice behind ExHotMess.net, a blog where she writes raw, real stories about recovery, resilience, and life in the messy middle. When she's not helping others find their voice, she's usually geeking out over astrology, audio editing, or a perfectly crafted sentence.

Find our guest on:

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show notes:

On-Call Me Maybe Podcast
Mandy's LinkedIn post on the importance of writing with heart
The Happiness Lab (episode with Dr. Vivek Murthy, former US Surgeon General)
Mandy's Blog

Transcript:
ADRIANA:
Hey everyone, welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast, in which we dive into the career journeys of some of the amazing humans in tech and geek out on topics like software development, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And geeking out with me today, I have Mandy Moore. Welcome, Mandy.

MANDY:
Hello.

ADRIANA:
Hey, I'm super excited to have you on here. And we have a really cool connection because, Mandy used to be the producer of On-Call Me Maybe, which is the podcast that Ana Margarita Medina and I used to do back in our Lightstep days, which feels like forever ago, but it wasn't like that long ago.

MANDY:
I love those days. I miss those days.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. They were. They were fun times. And where are you calling from, Mandy?

MANDY:
I am from calling in from York, Pennsylvania.

ADRIANA:
Awesome fellow east coaster. Love it. Cool. Well, let's launch into the icebreaker questions. Are you ready?

MANDY:
Sure.

ADRIANA:
Okay, let's do it. So first question. Are you a lefty or a righty?

MANDY:
I'm a lefty.

ADRIANA:
Oh my God, me too!

MANDY:
We've got some special skills.

ADRIANA:
We do! We do! And are you are you like a everything lefty or a, like some things you do right handed. Like I can't mouse left handed.

MANDY:
No. I'm ambidextrous, so I write left handed and I eat left handed. But like I do all sports right handed, and I cut right handed.

ADRIANA:
No way!

MANDY:
I, I, I do lots of things right handed.

ADRIANA:
That's so cool. It's so interesting to talk to, fellow lefties about, like, the extent of their of their leftieness.

MANDY:
Yeah, it's all over the place.

ADRIANA:
It is. Oooh, fun! Awesome. Okay. Next question. Are you an iPhone or Android gal?

MANDY:
iPhone.

ADRIANA:
Awesome. Fellow iPhone-er. For computers, do you prefer Mac, Linux, or Windows?

MANDY:
Mac.

ADRIANA:
Same. Same. Do you have a favorite programing language?

MANDY:
No, I don't, I don't I'm not a programmer. I just work tech adjacent.

ADRIANA:
I love it, I love it, and it's so fun to like, meet all sorts of folks who are tech adjacent, and I’ve had a few on the podcast as well. So we will we will be digging more into that. Okay. Two more questions left. Do you prefer to consume your content using, through video or text?

MANDY:
Text.

ADRIANA:
And final question what is your superpower?

MANDY:
Ooh, my superpower is being able to tell a good story.

ADRIANA:
Ooh, fantastic. And so important, also, like in in the type of work that you do as well. Right.

MANDY:
Exactly, exactly. Lots of storytelling involved in marketing and content marketing, tech marketing, all that kind of stuff.

ADRIANA:
Well, awesome. I think this is a good segue to get into, your tech journey. Because as you mentioned, you're you're tech adjacent. So, what you tell us a little bit about that.

MANDY:
Yeah. So I didn't set out to work in tech. I was a single mom on government assistance, just trying to survive. And this was about 15 years ago. I answered a Craigslist ad from a software developer who needed administrative help, like answering emails and scheduling meetings and doing kind of easy stuff. So I answered that ad, and he hired me, and a few weeks, and he asked if I could edit his podcast, and I said, “Pod what?”

I had no idea what a podcast even was, but I know that I needed, you know, the money and the work. So I spent a few... a weekend, heads down, figuring it out, playing with it, and, free software, open source software called Audacity. And, from there, I did such a solid job that he started just sending me referrals. And within a year, I went from food stamps to running a freelance business. So that... that one scrappy “Yes” you know, turned into a 15 year career in digital marketing, podcast production and content strategy, mostly in the tech and software space. So I've edited over 10,000 edit... or I've edited over 10,000 hours of audio, launched and grown shows, built social strategies, and worked with dev teams, founders and creators around the world.

And I did it all while learning on the job, saying yes before I was ready, and never letting anyone else define what I was capable of.

ADRIANA:
That is so amazing, and I love the whole. Like your whole journey is incredible and you know it. It's it's cool because I feel like that's the kind of mindset that you need in, in software engineering is like being willing to learn and being able to learn quickly. So that's so that's, that's so awesome. And I and I think like another thing that you mentioned, which I really love, is that you, even though you didn't have the skills, you said yes to it and and you gave yourself the skills which you know, I, I've talked to so many women in tech who are like, I don't want to apply for this job because I, I need more time to build up my skills. And I don't think I have enough skills. And you're like, nope, I bet on myself. I'm doing this.

MANDY:
Yeah. You know, at first I didn't even realize I was building a career. I was just following the work. I, I kept saying yes to new challenges managing social writing, blog post, building content, calendars, learning SEO, editing more podcasts. You know, like every client taught me something new. And eventually I realized that I wasn't just survival anymore, that I was actually just really good at this. And over time, I carved out a niche working mostly with tech companies and dev focused brands. So I loved it because it blended creativity with systems. I could help founders find their voice and launch podcasts that actually connected, and create strategies that weren't just performative, but real.

ADRIANA:
That's great. And, you know, for the work that you've done on, on various podcasts, what what have you seen as like the secret sauce to a successful podcast?

MANDY:
The secret sauce to successful podcast. I really think it comes from being able to, you know, have consistency and connection, consistency and showing up, releasing on schedule and and keeping the quality high and having and connection and knowing who you're talking to and why they should care. You know, people think they need to be flashy or go viral, but the truth is, like, if you can speak directly to your niche like you're in their head, they'll come back. You know, that's what builds trust. That's that's what builds community. And, you know, here's what most people overlook. The work doesn't end when you hit publish. You've got to market the episode and slice it up and share it and quote it and turn it into social blogs, emails, whatever helps the content live longer than the 45 minutes in somebody's podcast app. You know, the best shows I've worked on have a clear voice, a strong point of view, and a host who gives a damn. You know? Yeah, you can't fake that.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, that's so true. That's so true. And, you know, it's it's cool because I learned so much from you, when you were producing On-Call Me Maybe for us, because I didn't know any of those things. And I remember even, like, that was my first time ever, ever hosting a podcast. And I was like, oh, my God, I am so terrified. And then when I started this podcast, I'm like, you know, I went from having a co-host to not having a co-host to and having to do everything myself, and it is so much work, and especially, as you said, to keep that content going even long past when the episode drops. Like, I swear I spend a lot of my time, you know, picking like, the perfect audiograms for my podcast. And it's like, every time I do it, I'm like, oh my God, this is like so much work. But then you, like, find that perfect quote and you're like, oh, it was so worth it.

MANDY:
Yeah. Now... people love the idea of having a podcast, but what they don't always love is the actual work that goes into making it good. You know, it's not just hopping on zoom and chatting with your friend for 45 minutes. There's prep and scripting and guest management and audio editing, writing the show notes and upload, promoting repurposing clips for social.

And then there's the tracking, the analytics everybody's most fun for, and then doing it again next week and the week after that. So a great podcast really takes intention and stamina. You have to care enough to keep showing up even when you're tired and even when the downloads are low and even when no one's cheering you on yet.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, that's so true. That's so true. And I think being mindful of like, you know, putting in the effort for the show notes, putting in the effort for transcription. That's another thing that I learned from you. Like you always provided us with transcripts for On-Call Me Maybe. And again, it's like such a tedious process to like and even with tools at our disposal, like I, you know, I use the Adobe suite for, for the transcription of my podcast now and it's like it does a decent job, but I have to make sure it's not spewing shit.

So, like, I have to go through and I'm like replaying the whole thing as I'm, as I'm going and, and like for me, the, the the podcasts that you've worked with, have they been mostly audio or have you done a combination of audio and video?

MANDY:
I've done both. I do mostly audio podcast, but on occasion I do video as well.

ADRIANA:
And what's how have you found the difference in in editing the audio podcast versus the video? The ones that are like video and audio.

MANDY:
I mean, it's obviously technically it's going to be a little bit harder to edit video podcasts in general, but, audio, I think I find it very relaxing when I audio edit, I kind of look at it as putting a puzzle together and just kind of sitting down and editing out like you can with audio. You can really get into the nitty gritty and edit out those ums and, and the, the things that you don't want to make it into the conversation. Video is harder to do that. You have to really be mindful where your cuts are and so does your subject. So that's where it gets a little dicey.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, that's so true. I I've had instances where I'm like cutting the video and and I'm just listening to it. I'm like, oh that sounds great. And then you look at the, the, at the video itself and you see like someone jolting and you're like. Crap. So yeah, definitely have to be mindful of, of those things. Now switching gears a little bit, because you mentioned that you do a lot of like community building work. So you said like your tech journey started off, with the podcast editing. How did you, move into, like, the community building stuff?

MANDY:
Yeah. So when I started doing the podcasting work, I got into community, when, the developer wanted, you know, started to have fans of the shows. So you need a place for those fans to kind of talk and interact. So those kind of became Slack communities or Discord communities and stuff like that. So, for me, podcasting, it isn't just about content, it's also community building. So that shows don't just inform people, they make people feel seen. When a listener hears a host ask the exact question they've been wondering, or when a guest shares something that hits a nerve, that creates a bond. And if you keep showing up with that same level of honesty and value, you're not just building an audience, you're building a community.

And that doesn't stop at the mic. So community is built in comments, and in DMs, and in the way you repurpose episodes into content that invites conversation. I've worked with shows where the podcast was just the entry point. You know what really grew the brand was what happened after the episode. You know, the discussions, the emails, the real relationships.

ADRIANA:
Oh, wow, that's so cool. So how do you, how how do you manage, how do you manage those conversations? Like when you're, when you're building out the community, are you like, are you there as a moderator? Do you like make comments as well? Like how how does that work?

MANDY:
When you're building a community, especially, one invites vulnerability or depth, you have to lead with clarity and care. So you're not just starting conversations, you're holding space for people. And that means managing tone, expectations and boundaries. And I always say, you know, set the vibe first. What kind of space is this? What's okay here and what's not. You know, people respond to structure that feels safe, not restrictive.

So I try to model the kind of communication that I want to see. And that's raw and real and honest and respectful. And if things veer off course, we don't avoid it. We just address it head on. But with compassion. You know, community management isn't just deleting comments, it's stewarding energy. It's knowing when to step in, when to stay back, and when to remind folks, you know, we're here to connect, not perform. So the biggest thing I learned is people don't need you to have all the answers. They just need to know that you're listening and that you care.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, that's so important. And I think, you know, having a place where people can be vulnerable and not have like retaliation against them for being vulnerable, like providing a safe space. For people to coexist, I think is so important, especially, like, you know, the, the, the interwebs are so, rife with, with toxicity these days. So, so being able to, to provide that is so important.

MANDY:
Absolutely.

ADRIANA:
Now, you know, let's talk a little bit about, social media marketing because, I find it's so interesting to like writing social media copy versus like, writing a blog post is such a different beast. Can you talk a little bit about, like what. What goes into writing social media copy and, and even, like, making, you know, thoughtful decisions based on the social media platform that you're, you're posting on as well.

MANDY:
Yeah. So social media marketing gets a bad rap because people think it's either mindless scrolling or dancing on TikTok. But at its core, it's relationship building at scale. So good social isn't about going viral. It's about showing up consistently with something real to say. It's storytelling and strategy and service all rolled into one. It's knowing who you're talking to and what they care about, and how to show up in a way that earns their trust over time. So I don't do fluff, I don't do Hollywood trends. And when I work with clients to find their actual voice, not the ones that their competitors are using, and build the content that resonates and that drives action. And it doesn't feel like marketing. And I always remind people that social is a two way street. You know, if you're if you're just broadcasting and not engaging, you're not doing social, you're you're just doing digital billboards.

The power is in the comments and the replies and the conversation. That's where the brand loyalty lives. So, you know, good social media copy, what goes into that? It might look short, but there's so much that goes into it. You know, every line has a job to do. You need a hook that grabs the attention in 1 to 2 seconds, because that's all you've got.

When people are scrolling, you know, you need messaging that's emotionally resonant but still aligned with your brand voice. You you need to know the goal of the post is it engagement clicks, share saves? You know every post should serve a purpose and a lot of people don't understand it's deeper. Social media's deeper than than that.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, that's so true. That's so true. And it it's interesting that you mentioned, too, on the you know, you need an attention grabber, because I've found like you know, like LinkedIn for example, you can post long ass posts. Right. But if that first sentence or two doesn't grab someone's attention, then it doesn't really matter what else you say afterwards, right?

MANDY:
No, no. And you also have to understand the algorithmic context. You know what works on LinkedIn doesn't work on Instagram and what works in a caption doesn't always work in a carousel. You know, platform fluency also matters. You know, the best copy sounds human. It mirrors how your audience actually talks. It solves a problem. It tells a story, or it says something bold enough to start a conversation. And ideally it does that in as few words as possible because no one's here for a novel on a Tuesday afternoon.

ADRIANA:
Oh my God, it's so, so true. Yeah. And I think also what you mentioned about like, you can't just, you know, it's it's not like, you know, just post and walk away either, like because otherwise as you said what's the point? Engaging, I think, really matters. And I think in doing so as well, the people who took the time to make comments are like, oh, they care.

MANDY:
Now, great copy is part psychology, part storytelling and part restraint.

ADRIANA:
Oh yeah. That’s so true.

MANDY:
You have to feel what your audience needs and then deliver it in scroll-stopping, you know, crystal clearness.

ADRIANA:
Yeah that's true. That's true. Yeah. I often find myself, like rereading my, my social copy because, you know, at first something might sound like it makes sense in your head, and then you're rereading it and you're like, oh, but people probably don't have the context that I have in my head, so I need to clarify. Otherwise they'll misunderstand.

MANDY:
Yeah.

ADRIANA:
And then the other one that I find, you know, like, whereas with LinkedIn, you, you have much higher character limits, then you've got the opposite with like, Bluesky, where you are so restricted. And I mean, I guess you could like, you can turn it into a thread, but I don't I don't necessarily... I try to avoid those personally because I don't necessarily find that people will go through your thread.

MANDY:
Yeah. No, Bluesky forces you to be concise. You've got 300 characters to make your point. You know, be funny or real or spark conversation. You know, that's not a lot of room, but honestly, it it makes you a better writer.

ADRIANA:
It's true, it's true. Yeah, it's definitely, it has definitely forced me to, to, to be more concise. And the other thing, I don't know how you feel about this, but like, I've, I've tried using AI to help me write copy for my social purpose, for my podcast. And I'm like, oh God. Did it ever fall flat on its face? Like, I was like, this. This doesn't even sound like me.

MANDY:
No, you can't have. There's no substitute for yourself. There's really not.

ADRIANA:
There. Yeah, I agree, and that's why, you know, I think there was even, there was a post that you did recently on LinkedIn. I think talking about, you know, like having, like a genuine, having a genuine voice and I think I, I'll try to, like, pull up the, the post for, for the show notes, but, I replied how, like, you know, this is why you can't like, you can't really you can't use AI to write blog posts. There's something like for me for like my writing when I write my blog posts, it's so, it's so colloquial, so like relaxed that there's no fucking AI in the world, I think, that could emulate that. Hey, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe someday there's going to be an AI that can emulate my writing voice, but I. I feel like this is this is what I bring, when I write and and I'm hoping that there won’t be an AI that will take that from me.

MANDY:
I hear you there. I hear you there. You know, blog writing, real blog writing is not just, you know, hitting about, you know, it's not just about hitting word counts or, you know, stuffing in the keywords. It's about emotional resonance. It's about voice. It's about seeing something that matters. So yeah, AI can be a tool. I use it, but it's just not a replacement for voice.

ADRIANA:
Yes, exactly. Like, you know, sometimes I'm I get fumbled in my words and I'm like, I'm wording this in like the stupidest way possible. So I'll like, you know, I'll ask AI, just make this sound prettier. And I'm like, okay, I can work with that. That fits in, that fits in. But yeah, I mean, to use to use like a chunk of AI to replace your voice. Just I don't, I don't feel like that has ever worked.

MANDY:
No. AI can give you structure where it can help you brainstorm. You know, hell, it can write a technically correct blog post, but what it can’t do, at least not well, is just write like somebody who's been through it.

ADRIANA:
And that's what people relate to.

MANDY:
It's it just it doesn't know how to tell the truth in a way that makes somebody sit back and go, “Oh, so it's not just me.”

ADRIANA:
Yes. And I think you you nailed it spot on. And I think this is what draws people to content... is that realization that we're in this together. You've experienced this. You know what it's like you got in my head somehow and and I think that that's what that's what forms community. And we all want to belong, somehow, somewhere. Right. And finding finding places where, where people get us, is like, just the ultimate, I, I feel like that that is the goal, right?

MANDY:
Right.

ADRIANA:
Now, I wanted to ask you as well, you know, speaking of, like, knowing knowing the social media platform, how do you find. Because this is something I, I struggle with, on Instagram, like promoting, podcast content on, on Instagram, like, for me, I think I do, my, probably my stuff does best like if I do audiograms. But like just a straight up post, you know, for my podcast is like, eeeeahhh.

MANDY:
Yeah.

ADRIANA:
Like how how do you feel like that differs from like your, your traditional you like your LinkedIns and Blueskies of the world.

MANDY:
So Instagram is all about visual storytelling. So for podcasting the trick is to stop treating it like an audio platform and start treating it like a narrative preview. So I ask myself, you know, what's the moment in this episode that would stop someone mid scroll? Is it a quote? Is a facial expression? Is it a spicy opinion? A mic drop moment?

You know, that's the content I would lead with. Reels and carousels are gold right now. So you'd want, you know, short, punchy clips with captions burned in or, you know, a series of slides. That's what the episode's about. Without giving it all away, you know, think, value, emotion or controversy in the first three seconds, and promote it more than once. You know, people aren't seeing every post. You can repurpose the same episode five different ways across a few days, and it'll still feel fresh.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, that one's an interesting one though. Like re promoting the content because I like, I do find I get a little bit self-conscious about re-promoting my content. Like, you know, if I, I'll post like a link to a blog post and it didn't get like a lot of it didn't get any like, say, Bluesky would be like, nobody loves me. And, and you know, it's like, just repost it.

MANDY:
Yeah. I mean, re-promoting content. It's not lazy. It's smart. The internet moves fast and people miss things and algorithms are just unpredictable. And if you're only posting about something once, you're basically whispering into a void and hoping somebody catches it.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, that that's actually a great way of putting it. Yeah. And that's the thing is, it's basically, I guess the internet's kind of like this fast moving stream and you'll, you'll like, catch bits of it every so often and you'll miss probably most of it, unless you're one of those people who’s just like, online all day long. There's there's no possible way you can.

MANDY:
People need to see something multiple times to remember it, let alone take action on it. And the truth is, and nobody's paying as close attention to your feed as you are usually, unless you're that person we just mentioned. You know, what feels repetitive to you probably feels like clarity to your audience.

ADRIANA:
Oh yeah, that's so true. That's so true. And you know, all of this stuff underscores why it's important to have, you know, people like you out there who specialize in doing this type of work because it is, it is a full time job. It is a lot of work to like, keep that, keep that momentum going, to be mindful and thoughtful of what you're going to post, to remember, to just keep reposting, to, to right, you know, to to do the, the, the platform specific content as well. Like it's it's a lot of stuff. It's a lot of stuff. If anyone ever thought that this was fluff work, it is not. It is a lot of work. It's sometimes I think in some ways, like it's more effort to write social copy than it is to write a full fledged blog post.

MANDY:
You're it's true.

ADRIANA:
Now, you know, I wanted to. Switch gears a little bit and talk about, like, you know, like you're you're a mom. And I feel like, we don't have enough conversations about, like, working women, let alone working women in tech. How how do you approach, being like a working mom, a working mom in tech? What have you found have been like, you know, roadblocks, barriers that you've had to get past?

MANDY:
Yeah. So it means constantly navigating systems that weren't built for people like me. You know, tech loves to talk about innovation, but when it comes to flexibility, support or understanding real life circumstance and chaos, it's still has a really, really long way to go. I've had to build my own path sometimes with a baby on my hip, sometimes between hospital visits, like I am now. Sometimes on two hours of sleep. There's no off switch when you're a mom. But honestly, that's what's made me better at what I do. I don't waste time. I communicate clearly and I get shit done.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, absolutely. And that's I think that's what a lot of folks miss out on. The super power of of the mom is that you ain't got time for this shit. Let's get it done.

MANDY:
I've had to make peace with not being polished all the time. You know, you'll get me on zoom with a kid in the background sometimes, or, you know, you'll get boundaries, you'll get reality, but you'll also get relentless follow through and creative problem solving and loyalty that doesn't quit when things get hard. You know, I don't hide in being a mom. It's it's part of what makes me effective. And I think more, you know, companies and people in tech need to realize that the messy middle is often where the best talent lives.

ADRIANA:
It's so true. It's so true. And and being unafraid to like, just always showing perfection because nobody lives in perfection. And I think like we fall victim to that, like in social media. I think we fall victim to that at the workplace as well. Right? Especially when office work was a lot more prevalent. And, you know, there's like there's office persona that's like the super-put-together-on-the-outside person. And then there's like chaotic real life that that is actually behind, you know, that mask and it it's interesting. I was listening to this podcast that I really love, called, “The Happiness Lab”. And, one of the episodes that, they had on was talking about, it was on parenting, and they were talking about like, I think it was when, the one of the former surgeon generals of the US was saying that he and his wife used to never invite people over to their house because it was, like, always chaotic and messy.

And then they're like, whatever, we'll just do it. And people come as you are, like, you know, whatever this, this is what it is. We just want people to come over and have a good time. And this type of action gives people permission to like, oh my God, I don't have to be perfect all the time too. Because I think we all get caught up in these, you know, like fake in the fake perfection that that's social media gives us even even, as you said, like Zoom calls sometimes it's like, oh, I like how pristine.

MANDY:
Now, I, I gave up on perfection a long time ago because it's not real. It's a moving target. And chasing it nearly cost me everything. You know, my health, my creativity and my peace. So I've built a career and a place out of showing up anyway, you know, whether that's messy or honest or in progress. And that's just where the real connection happens. You know, no one relates to the version of you that has it all together. They relate to the version that's trying and learning and pivoting and getting back up.

ADRIANA:
Yes. Yeah. And I think those are the stories that we that we need to highlight. And I think that's why it's so important also to like be so open about these things. Like on social media, you're on your LinkedIn. You've always been like very candid about this stuff. And I think it's awesome. I love it because I think you give other people permission to also share their stories because, like, it's not like we're all it's not like we're, you know, like you're you're not the only one going through the stuff everyone's got, you know, some form of struggle.

And so you showing your vulnerability and I think, you know, you show your resilience as well. And having worked with you as well, like, you know, the, the stuff that you put out, put out for us for On-Call Me Maybe, was always like super top notch. I mean, this is what I aspire to. You're my benchmark. Whenever I do stuff for this podcast, I'm like, what would Mandy have done?

And this is what, you know, what I try to follow, in the capacity that I can, when, when I do my podcast. So I, I do thank you for, you know, being vulnerable, in public on social media because I think we we need that. I'm so over like the stuffiness of of the corporate world.

Like, been there, done that. We we just need more. We need more candor that, you know, like the candor that you bring. So thank you.

MANDY:
Thank you. That whole mindset of not chasing perfection is exactly why I created my own blog, and I. I put it out there and I put it on LinkedIn to my professional following. You know, I spent so many years trying to hold it all together to be the perfect mom, to be the perfect employee, to be the perfect version of myself.

And it damn near broke me. So I started writing. Not to perform, but to process and to tell the truth about recovery and trauma and motherhood. Career pivot. All of it. You know, I wanted a place where people like me, people who have suffered, survive things that don't fit into tidy Instagram captions could feel seen. So yeah, that's why.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. That's great. That's great. And I think, you know, you mentioning stuff like career pivots. Another important thing to keep in mind these days because, like, it's funny, I've had this conversation with, my daughter, she's in 11th grade, and they get them thinking about, like, university early on, like she took a careers course in 10th grade, and they're like, oh, you have to plan like the courses you're taking in high school and, like.

And she was getting overwhelmed. She's like, they're making me choose what I want to do. Like. And I don't even fully understand what that is. Right? Back in 10th grade. And I'm like, Hannah, the greatest thing that you have at your disposal is the ability to change your mind, because if it ain't working out for you, you can switch out of it.

MANDY:
Absolutely.

ADRIANA:
And I think, you know, that's and I think, you know, when once we get into the workforce, we experience it firsthand. I mean, my career's pivoted so many times in the last 24 years, like, it’s wild.

MANDY:
I still don’t know what I want to do, I, I don't know. And I, a part of me loves it, but a part of me hates it at the same time. So we'll see!

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Yeah. And, and you've got at your disposal the ability to pivot to something else.

MANDY:
You have the ability to change in, you know, you wake up and it's a brand new day and you can be whatever you want to be on any given day.

ADRIANA:
Exactly. I love that so much. Now we are coming up on time. But before we, part ways, do you have any, I mean, you've had so many lovely words of wisdom. I'm going to have a hard time picking out the audiograms for this episode. But do you have any parting words of wisdom or hot takes or anything you want to, share his final words with our audience?

MANDY:
Parting words of wisdom. If I have to leave you with anything, you know it's. I guess this. It's. Stop waiting to feel ready. You know, ready is a myth. Clarity comes after action, not before. So say yes to the things that scare you. You know, start messy. Hit publish. Even if your voice shakes you don't need to be perfect. You just need to be real. You know? That's what people connect with. That's what changes things. So whether you're building a brand or healing something big or, you know, trying to make it through the week, you're allowed to take up space exactly as you are. You don't have to earn your right to be here.

ADRIANA:
Damn. That is wow, that those are such powerful words. That's going to probably make it onto an audiogram, you know, so powerful. And what a lovely way to, to finish off the episode. So once again, thank you, Mandy, so much for Geeking Out with me today. And y'all, don't forget to subscribe. Be sure to check the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media. Until next time...

MANDY:
Peace out. Geek out.

ADRIANA:
Geeking Out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Villela. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking Out is also produced by my daughter Hannah Maxwell, who, incidentally, designed all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the socials by going to bento.me/geekingout.

The One Where We Geek Out on Kubernetes Contribution with Kat Cosgrove

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Kat Cosgrove, Adriana Villela) — Tue, 9 Sep 2025 04:00:00 +0000

Key takeaways:

Coping with ADHD and leveraging it as a superpower
The importance of effective communication (and how that got her working on Kubernetes)
New contributors can and should call out more senior contributors when they are wrong
Increase in the student contributions in open source, specifically Kubernetes
The importance of making tech connections with more senior folks, and how that helped Kat transition into cybersecurity
Path to tech included being paid to watch horror movies

About our guest:

Kat Cosgrove (she/they) is the Head of Developer Advocacy at Minimus, focused on the growth and nurturing of open source through authentic contribution. In particular, her specialties are approachable 101-level content and deep dives on the history of technology, with a focus on DevOps and cloud native.

She was the Kubernetes Release Lead for 1.30 Uwubernetes, and currently serves as both the Release Team subproject owner and SIG Docs tech lead.

Find our guest on:

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show notes:

Google Fi Wireless
Microsoft Zune
Wine (Windows emulator on Linux)
Kubernetes release team
Kubernetes Community Groups
k3s
dockershim
containerd
Dockershim Announcement (Kat's article on the Kubernetes blog)
Uwubernetes
OpenTelemetry End User SIG
Minimus
UK House of Lords
OpenUK Annual Awards 2025
Blockbuster video
Black Lodge Video
Code Fellows Bootcamp

Transcript:
ADRIANA:
Hey everyone, welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast, in which we dive into the career journeys of some of the amazing humans in tech, and geek out on topics like software development, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And geeking out with me today, I have Kat Cosgrove. Welcome, Kat.

KAT:
Howdy.

ADRIANA:
And where are you calling from?

KAT:
Edinburgh, Scotland.

ADRIANA:
Ooh, exciting. Okay. Are you ready to dive into our icebreaker questions?

KAT:
Yeah, let's hit it.

ADRIANA:
All right, so first question. Are you a lefty or a righty?

KAT:
I am a righty.

ADRIANA:
Okay, next question. Do you prefer iPhone or Android?

KAT:
Android. I, had an I. The last iPhone I had was a 3GS. It died when I dropped it in the bathtub, and, I just, I don't know, I have a, Pixel 9 Pro.

ADRIANA:
How do you like that?

KAT:
I love it, but I I'm kind of chained to it. Or, like, I committed hard to the Pixel because I use Google Fi. Because I travel so much, that I don't want to deal with cell phone carriers that, like, charge you different rates for different countries for data and minutes, and Google Fi does not. So I'm, I'm locked into the Android Google ecosystem.

ADRIANA:
It's all about the lock in, right? With... cell phones. So. Yes.

KAT:
Yeah. Once they get you, you got.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. That's it. That's right. Yeah. Apple got me at the iPhone 3G. Yes. And I, I've not let go since. I had a BlackBerry before that. Which I loved until it started to like shut down in the middle of phone calls. And then I just got, like, pissed. I'm like, I'm switching. I don't care.

KAT:
Yeah, yeah, that's, that's how I rage quit. The iPod. I don't know what. Like, I'm cursed or like, my iPods were haunted, but, like, I had three iPods in a row that I had to take back to the Genius Bar to get replaced because, albums were skipping, like, albums that had been purchased from iTunes were skipping as if, like, I had ripped a bad CD or something. Kept doing it, and I gave up and bought a Zune. And I...

ADRIANA:
How was that? Because I almost bought one.

KAT:
I loved it, I missed them. The software sucked shit. Like the actual, like Zune desktop application was laggy and slow, but the actual experience using the literal device was incredible. I really miss it. I don't use my ph-- I hike a lot and I don't like to have. I don't use my phone when when I hike, but I still like to have music. If Microsoft would rerelease the goddamn Zune, I would buy one in a heartbeat, like so fast.

ADRIANA:
That is so cool because I, I totally considered one at the time and I remember too... like the Zune, had some advanced features even over the iPod. I think you could even do like, Bluetooth, like music transfer between Zune users, right? Is that...?

KAT:
Yeah. You could and, I think, I think I remember them, being able to handle, audio output at a higher bit rate. But it's it's been so long since I had a Zune. Like, I have no idea if that that's a correct memory or not, but also they just, like, looked cooler. I was very goth back then, and like, I still am, obviously. But I mean, look at me, but, the Zune came in black and white. I'm not. I'm come in black. So.

ADRIANA:
Well there you go. So endorsement for the Zune. That's so cool.

KAT:
It's a good technology. Let's go.

ADRIANA:
Right on. Okay. Next question. Do you prefer Mac, Linux or Windows?

KAT:
It depends on what I'm doing. This call is coming to you from my Windows desktop, okay. Which is a machine that I built for gaming, and also handles all of my big video calls. It's got a big camera mounted behind my desk and a ring light for, like, daily, everyday use. Browsing the internet, playing video games, Windows, Windows, Windows all the way. I actually think that it would be a pretty hard sell to convince me to use Linux as a daily driver in any situation. The user experience is still just like, not very good. And my primary reason for having a home desktop is playing video games, which Linux is just simply not good at. For any time that I have to write code, I use my MacBook. That... that I do prefer, like, I can do it on Windows, right?

Like, WSL2 is fine, but I already have all of my dev environments set up on my MacBook, so I use that. But, most of the time if I'm on the computer, I'm on this Windows machine.

ADRIANA:
Ah! Cool, cool.

KAT:
Sorry everybody.

ADRIANA:
Hahaha. It's interesting though, because, you know, so many of my friends who are gamers, it's like, yeah, Windows. It's Windows for gaming or bust. Because can't... you cannot convince anyone to a game on a Mac, or on a Linux machine.

KAT:
No. Like some stuff you can emulate. Like like a bunch of older games have native support for Linux, or you can, you can run Wine or something like it to emulate Windows to run it, but it's not going to be great, experience-wise and like brand new Triple-A games. No, it's not going to happen.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. I feel ya. Okay. Next question. Do you have a favorite programing language?

KAT:
Yeah. It's Python. I, I do also know like Go and JavaScript and PHP, but, if I need to prototype something very, very quickly, Python may not be the best choice for like what I'm actually trying to do, but I can make it, do it, and I can make it do it pretty quickly. Like it's a good multi-tool language for me.

It's it's not the first language I learned. So that's that's not why. It's just, it it feels very, very flexible. So I could prototype something in Python and then build it in a more ideal language later on. But if I'm just trying to bang something out real quick. Python.

ADRIANA:
I can so relate to that because, my I, I did Java for 16 years, so I learned Python later in life and... I find is... so nice to code in.

KAT:
It is! It's pleasant. It's like, it's like, it's pseudo code with valid and executable, right? Yeah. You can kind of just, giving it a lot of the time and you're going to be pretty close to writing valid Python. So yeah. Why not.

ADRIANA:
Exactly. Yeah. It's it's it's just it's absolutely lovely. And. Yeah, it's also like my nowadays like my go to whenever I want to fuck around with stuff. It's like, yeah.

KAT:
Somebody's got a library for that, you know.

ADRIANA:
Exactly, exactly. And it's one of those like it's, it's, I guess an old timey language by now. I mean, it's been around for a while.

KAT:
Yes. Since like 1996, I think. So it's like it's it's not quite a legacy language, but like it's definitely it's mature for sure. It's not geriatric, but it's mature. You can make it do damn near anything, really.

ADRIANA:
You really can! Okay. Next question. Do you prefer dev or ops?

KAT:
That's like that's a difficult question. So I used to be a dev. I was a web developer, and then I was an embedded Linux developer, which does cause, like a very, very specific type of brain damage from which I have recovered, entirely. But when I started doing developer advocacy, I was working for, like, DevOps tooling companies. I was working for JFrog. So. Ops has made me a lot of money and given me like the financial freedom to, take care of myself and people I care about. So. So I like ops quite a lot for that. Like, now, obviously I work in cybersecurity, but, I don't know. I think I'm still going to have to go dev because ops doesn't allow me as easily to build stupid shit when I'm bored.

ADRIANA:
Yes, that is.

KAT:
And so like, on the one hand, financial freedom on the other, stupid shit.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

KAT:
And the stupid shit does make me happy, so... I’m going to have to go dev.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah. And on the stupid shit, when I'm bored, it's like, you know, you can, sure you can spin up like a Kubernetes cluster in your Google Cloud, but it's going to cost you.

KAT:
It's going to cost you. It's going to cost you. That shit is not free. No. Whereas making a, I don't know, dumb fake conference and chucking it on Netlify is free as long as you don't get too much traffic. So it's, you know. Yeah. I'm gonna have to say dev for the fun factor.

ADRIANA:
Love it, love it. Okay, next question. Do you prefer JSON or YAML?

KAT:
JSON? And I know that I shouldn't say that because I work in Kubernetes and we kind of like assume that everything is going to be YAML, but you can feed Kubernetes JSON as well. It doesn't doesn't have to be YAML. YAML bothers me because there isn't a consistent spec. It is like too easy to end up with something that's improperly formatted because there's like, invisible whitespace hanging out.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

KAT:
That drives me absolutely bonkers. I just find JSON easier to read, too. So, Related. I once heard a woman straight face at a conference for, like, the entire duration of her talk. Say, Johnson, instead of JSON. And, like, I think she was fucking with everybody, because she was like, she was very capable. She she was not. She wasn't like junior. She wasn't new. She was very capable. So I think she was fucking with everybody. God. And I have thought about that since. And that conference was like, I don't know, fucking 7 or 8 years ago or something. And I still think about it. So, like, whoever you are, I can't remember your name. If you listen to this, please reach out because I just I gotta know if that was like, if you genuinely call it that, if you were fucking with people, if you don't know how it's pronounced, I gotta know. I really hope that you were fucking with everybody because it was so funny.

ADRIANA:
But she was like, that is next level. Like for.

KAT:
Incredibly good. It was at a Python conference. I just Johnson instead of JSON the whole time. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
You mentioned one thing which, you know, I, I knew about, but it is a little known fact about being able to feed JSON instead of YAML, manifest to your Kubernetes. So do you. So do you opt for using JSON instead? When when you're, when you're when you're applying like Kubernetes manifests?

KAT:
Myself, no, unless it is something that nobody else is going to have to deal with. Like most of the time I am like writing a Kubernetes manifest myself. I'm doing it for, the purposes of writing a blog or writing technical documentation for the Kubernetes project, which means I need to present it in the way that most Kubernetes users expect to see it. So I've got to kind of sling YAML for that one.

ADRIANA:
That is super fair. But if left to your own devices, I guess you would use JSON.

KAT:
Yeah I would, yeah, because I’m the only one maintaining it, I would rather be writing, reading and maintaining JSON.

ADRIANA:
So that's that makes sense. Okay. Next question. Do you prefer spaces or tabs?

KAT:
Tabs. But I use Sublime Text. Because I don't like full fledged IDEs They have too much shit going on. I find it annoying and distracting. And I just have Sublime Text, set up to interpret tab as spaces.

ADRIANA:
Nice.

KAT:
So, I'm hitting tab, but it is inputting spaces.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, but that's how it how I have my VSCode set up as well. So yeah. Cool. Okay. Two more questions. Do you prefer to consume content through video or text?

KAT:
Text? I cannot focus on a video. If I am forced to, consume content in the form of a video. I look to see if there's a transcript or I turn on closed captioning. I don't know what it is. And I've got to be running the video at like 2x, so I prefer to, if I'm learning something, I need to read it and then do it.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

KAT:
A video, I, kind of, slows me down so much that I get distracted and lose focus.

ADRIANA:
I... very relatable. I, you know, I produce videos as part of my job. Yeah. But I optimize on blog posts. I, I'm a serial blogger, and for consuming content, I'm the same as you, like text or bust. Videos are a last resort. Like desperation. I can't find the blog post on The Thing. I guess I'll watch this video.

KAT:
I guess. You do what you gotta. But I would very much prefer the-. Like so please, people producing video content, give me a transcript.

ADRIANA:
Yes, yes. Yeah. And that's so important. Like I've started... one of the things that takes the longest, when I do this podcast is the transcription. And even though I've got a tool that will transcribe it, I still have to go through and make sure that it's not spewing shit because, yeah, the things that come out of the, the transcription, program are just like, they're so hilarious. I should just like, screen capture every time it comes up with some weird words because.

KAT:
It probably doesn't know how to spell Kubernetes.

ADRIANA:
So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, I work in, OpenTelemetry a fair bit, and we shorten it to “OTel”. And the number of times it comes out as “hotel”.

KAT:
Oh that's funny. Okay. Hotel.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Yeah.

KAT:
Okay.

ADRIANA:
But yeah, I, I agree with you on the transcription. The captions like, I mean, I watch TV with captions on. I'm too ADHD to like... I can't just sit and watch. And that's the problem. I can't just sit and watch a video and I'm like, I got to be doing something. I feel like a lot more active when I'm reading versus watching a video. I get restless.

KAT:
Yeah, the jokes about, like, kids today needing to have like, somebody's jangling keys up here and subway surfers up on their phone just so that they can have a conversation that is, in fact, me. I am 35 years old, and I do need like six things going on at once in order to focus on one thing.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah. So I've got a million things on my desk that I fidget with. Even on it on any given day between playing with a hair elastic, I've got a collection of pins that I play with.

KAT:
I'm peeling gel polish off my fingernails.

ADRIANA:
Oh, nice. Yeah, yeah. Anything. Anything to, like, focus the brain. Right? Yeah. Cool. All right. Final question of our icebreakers. What is your superpower?

KAT:
So I have ADHD, and I don't take medication for it anymore. Because I don't like the way it makes me feel. It makes me feel like slow and sluggish and empty. The downside to that is that, I procrastinate a lot pretty badly. The upside is that if you give me a deadline, that thing will be done on the deadline. I'm going to stress myself out, and I'm going to bang that shit out, like in a couple hours.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

KAT:
But it will always be done on the deadline. I do not turn in work late. I don't. The only exception to that is conference talks. Because I define like an extra deadline for myself, like two weeks before the conference. Because I think it's disrespectful of your audience to, like, be writing a conference talk on the plane. A lot of developer advocates, like, brag about doing that, and I think it's so fucking shitty, and you should never admit to doing that in public. But, conference talks I do get done in advance. But everything else, I am just like, I, I'm not going to turn in work late. Never.

ADRIANA:
Awesome. That is a great superpower. So relatable, so relatable. I'm with you on the conference talks like I, I've had so many developer advocate friends say same thing like, I'll write a conference. Sorry, I'll write a talk on the plane. I'm like, I can't. I’m too... my anxiety kicks in. Like, there's no way that that's going to happen. I need time to prepare. Time to practice. Like.

KAT:
Yeah, like, I might still be tweaking slides on the plane, but, like, the talk is done. The talk has been practiced. Like I'm ready to go. You know, so I just, I don't know, be more respectful of your audience. They're they're paying a lot of money to see you.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And on on the the other point that you mentioned on the deadline because I it it must be a tech thing. So... so many of us have ADHD and I've noticed with my, my ADHD friends like it's the... procrastinate, procrastinate, procrastinate. And if you give them no deadline, nothing will happen. As soon as you give the deadline... It's like, it's on.

KAT:
It's done. It's done. I'm going to get ‘er done. Yeah. And it will stress me out and I will complain about it the whole day. Like, for sure. Like, I owe a blog tomorrow. I have not started it.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah.

KAT:
I've known about this for a month and I haven't started it. But that shit'll be done tomorrow.

ADRIANA:
Oh and plus your brain is probably working on it in the background anyway, unbeknownst.

KAT:
That's my excuse for it. Yeah. That like for the last month, I've been, like, idly thinking about how I'm going to structure this and what exactly I'm going to say. So like when I get up tomorrow at 6:30 in the morning and I have spent two hours hammering it out, it won't take really all that much effort, and it'll be in the hands of my colleagues before they wake up in the US.

ADRIANA:
There you go. Yeah. It's the superpower of ADHD.

KAT:
Yeah. I don't know if they know that I operate that way. It’ll be really interesting when they, listen to this.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

KAT:
Whoops! Sorry, Josh.

ADRIANA:
The other thing that you mentioned, which I thought was interesting, so, like, my ADHD is undiagnosed, but I tick all the boxes, and so.... I don't, I don't take any medication. And I've always wondered, like about, you know, what it's like to take meds because my, my personal fear, and I'm not against, like, you know, meds for, for mental health issues, but specifically for ADHD. I'm like, I see it as a superpower. So I'm like, oh, if I were to take it, how how different would it be? So it's interesting that for you, like in your personal experience, it didn't work for you. And you're, you're like rolling with you're you're making it work for you.

KAT:
Yeah. I'm just raw dogging it. And like, I, I think I think also. Other people can chime in with whether or not they had this experience. But, some of my friends experienced this, I experienced this. I wasn't diagnosed with ADHD until I was 20. So I spent like, my entire school career learning to work with what is wrong with my brain. Right. And like, developing coping mechanisms to make myself, like, functional at school and then functional at work. And being on ADHD medication. At first I was on Adderall and then I was on Vyvanse, and Vyvanse was much easier for me to deal with then than Adderall. It's screwed with those coping mechanisms. Like those those same coping mechanisms didn't work anymore because I was on an amphetamine that made it possible for me to focus without any effort. So it just made me feel, like weird and sluggish and not myself. So, you know, it also made it harder for me to eat, which sucks. And I, I, I really, really love eating. And, it's hard for me to eat on ADHD medication, so I lost a lot of weight, which is not not ideal either.

ADRIANA:
So yeah, I've heard I've heard that about, folks on ADHD meds. And that's always been a fear of mine, too, because I too love to eat. I enjoy my food.

KAT:
Yeah. Oh, yeah.

ADRIANA:
I mean, you know, at the end of the day, it's it's very much a personal choice. We're not endorsing one way or the other.

KAT:
Oh, totally.

ADRIANA:
It’s, very interesting to to hear like that, that perspective on things. So yeah.

KAT:
I think it's it's worth trying like because if you've got if you got ADHD, I think it's worth trying being medicated for it, you might love it. I hated it so.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. Thank you for thank you for sharing. Really appreciate it. So I want to, get into some other, some of the nitty gritty, so, I mean, you do some, like, really cool work. You are heavily involved in, in the Kubernetes world. Why don't you, could you share with our audience, like, how you got involved, what you're currently doing? Yeah.

KAT:
Yeah. So I'm currently the Kubernetes release team sub project owner and a technical lead for SIG docs. SIG stands for Special Interest Group. Kubernetes is made up of something like 30 ish, 30. I think it's 37. SIGs. There are SIGs that own code, like SIG Node or SIG Storage or SIG Networking. We call those vertical SIGs. Then we also have horizontal SIGs that have responsibilities spanning the whole of the project. And that's things like SIG Docs and SIG Security and SIG Release is I think technically, a horizontal SIG, but it's like it's a weird it lives in a weird corner off on its own for its responsibilities. And I got in through internet drama, actually.

So I learned Kubernetes at work when I was still an engineer. I was, I was doing embedded Linux development, and I needed to run Kubernetes on a small embedded device. So I learned k3s, which is, kind of a very, very small version of Kubernetes that's, takes a lot of shortcuts for you. It's not a great way to learn Kubernetes, but it is cool and useful.

And I was just kind of a Kubernetes user for a long time. But, a few years ago, like, I was friends with a bunch of Kubernetes maintainers, but I was not a contributor myself. A few years ago, the Kubernetes project decided to deprecate something called the dockershim. If you've been around long enough, you may, may remember this kerfuffle, but if you don't, a long, long time ago, the dawn of Kubernetes, the only, container runtime you could use in Kubernetes was Docker. That was the original Kubernetes runtime, and it is the entire Docker Engine stack. Eventually other runtimes were introduced and the Kubernetes projects decided we need a standard for how these runtimes interface with the rest of Kubernetes and Docker didn't comply with that runtime or with those, those requirements.

But because it was the first and so many people were using it, most users were using it, we compromised and we included something called the dockershim. And this was just like a tiny little software shim that allowed Kubernetes to get at the instance of containerd, the actual runtime that was running inside of the entire Docker tech stack. And this is just how things were for like six years, right? But the dockershim was a pain in the ass to maintain, and we didn't want to do it anymore like it was. It was janky and people didn't want to maintain it. So they announced they were going to deprecate it and they fumbled that announcement pretty catastrophically. They they grossly overestimated how much the average person understood about Kubernetes, about containers, about the, relationship between Kubernetes and Docker. So, like, there were people that thought, Google was killing Docker, the company, when like, like that's... enormous leap. Like, that's Google doesn't have anything to do with the day to day management of Kubernetes. They donated it to the CNCF and they lost control of it. And all container images are container images, whether they're produced by Docker or something else. So I, saw everybody freaking out online and like, thumbed out, I don't know, ten or so tweets explaining the relationship between Kubernetes and Docker, and the history there, like whether regular devs needed to care about this or not.

At what point you as a cluster admin need to care about this or not. And it went viral and I went from like 4000 Twitter followers, like 12,000 Twitter followers overnight, which was pretty scary, and immediately got called in by SIG Contributor experience for Kubernetes to write a bunch of blogs, explaining it. And then I kind of just never left.

Like, I stuck around. I got asked to serve on the Kubernetes release team as a shadow on the comms sub team, which is responsible for gathering feature blogs for a particular release and just kind of bounced around the release team for a while until I led the 130 release, which is now end of life, unfortunately. That was Uwubernetes. We get to, you get to give them code names when you're a release lead.

And I unfortunately did... I girlbossed too close to the sun. I had done a very good job running the release team, so the SIG Release leads, the actual leadership of that part of Kubernetes, made up a new job for me. And now the Kubernetes release team is my problem forever. Until I decide to step down. So, three times a year.

I have to make sure that Kubernetes gets out the door safely. Each cycle is four months long, and we're like, about smack dab in the middle of one right now. Yeah, it's it's a year round job now.

ADRIANA:
And on top of your day job.

KAT:
On top of my actual job, which, fortunately, because I'm a developer advocate, a lot of companies, like, want you to still be doing open source shit... as your day job. So it is, fortunately, part of my day job. It was at my last employer. It was not at my employer before that. And I was having to do it, like after hours.

And that sucked ass. So be nice to, open source contributors and maintainers. Most of this is done in people's spare time for no money at all.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah. And that's such an important point. And I also like, you know, big kudos to the companies that do support their employees working in open source. I, I'm in a similar position as you like I it's baked into my job to work in open source. So I'm grateful for that because I honestly don't know where I'd find the time. It's... wild.

KAT:
It’s hugely time consuming and like my my best friend is also an engineer. He works at Disney. But he doesn't get to do any open source as part of his day job. It's it's not it's not his thing. So he rarely does it. But the other day he did make an open source contribution, to some like, Roku thing. And he complained endlessly about how much of a pain in the ass the entire process was to, like, be able to do that. And that that sucks. You should be making it easy for your engineers to help maintain the things that you rely upon to make money.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah. Now was it a pain in the ass because of the process around the project that he was contributing to, or was it his company was being a pain in the ass about it?

KAT:
Both. Like, we do. This is something that I think we need to work on as open source maintainers. We all have like very different requirements for contributing to a project and like hoops that have to be jumped through. And I know most of us document them really well, but it it is a barrier. And maybe maybe there should be some standardizing on on. Hoops. Which is why sometimes you see contributors only exist within a specific ecosystem. Right. It's it's why you see some people working in open source and like never leaving. I don't know, Fedora or never leaving the Node.js ecosystem or never leaving like a foundation. Right. So like only contributing to LF projects or Apache projects or whatever because the the hoops are familiar and they don't have to learn new rules and new social norms every time.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Very true, very true. And then also like, depending on what, what area you're contributing to, like the maintainers. It might it's, it's a different vibe. Right. It's a different set of maintainers. So hopefully the maintainers you're, you're working with are a chill group who provide, you know, thoughtful comments around pull requests so that you're not turned off from ever contributing again. Like for for me, I, I worked in, like I've been in tech for now. I guess it'll be 24 years and most of my career was in the enterprise corporate side, like closed source. And only in the last three years I've gotten into open source. And I was like, shitting my pants, contributing, like doing my first open source contribution, like, oh my God, they're going to judge me.

KAT:
Oh, it's fucking terrifying.

ADRIANA:
It is so terrifying. Like it's such a vulnerable experience. You're being vulnerable when you open a pull request. Straight up. You know.

KAT:
It’s fucking scary at like, since I run the release team. So the Kubernetes works in a weird way with respect to this, we're the second largest open source project in the world, behind Linux. And we have a constantly rotating cast of people who are brand spanking new to open source. Like some of them are still in college. In the release team, because it's an open application. Anybody can apply to shadow on the Kubernetes release team. And so like there's a lot of hand-holding. There's a lot of teaching people like, no, it's okay to comment on this PR, you should comment on this PR you have to comment on this PR like, you have to tell this person who has been in the industry for 30 years, who was one of the original Kubernetes committers, that he's wrong because he is.

And that's so scary for somebody who's brand new. Right. Like that's scary for some people who have been in the project for years. And I get to handhold a bunch of sometimes literal children through, through saying no to an original committer.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah.

KAT:
That's terrifying. But it's a really great way to, I don’t know... get ballsy early on in open source.

ADRIANA:
Oh, totally. And it's such an important thing to do, like, I was having a conversation with someone who, you know, she, she was interviewing with someone that she met at a conference, and I, I asked her, I'm like, oh, so did you, did you like, you know, say, “Hey, remember me from, like, when we met at Blah Blah Conference?” And she's like, no, because he's he's more senior than me. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. We all breathe the same air. Like we're all human. His position makes you... makes him no more important than you. And you have to get past those hangups. And she said, you know, I think part of it is cultural. We are taught to like, you know, be respectful to our elders and therefore the the people older than us, more senior than us are the ones who know everything. And and so I reminded her, I'm like, no, no, you got to remember that. Like, you know, older folks like me, we still have tons to learn from you guys who are more junior like, this is super important.

KAT:
New people see things in a way that like, we can't like when you're an expert in something, you entirely forget what it's like to not be an expert. And like, you have an enormous blind spot because of that. Like, you should always be leveraging people who are brand new. They're super helpful.

ADRIANA:
Exactly, exactly. So I think it's great that that you're you're hand-holding folks in that way and encouraging them to, like, stand up for themselves and point out the wrongs. Because unfortunately, we have too much of that in industry. And I find, especially in large enterprise, with this obsession with seniority and rank and file and all that. So people won't point out you know, the gross wrongs and just let people continue doing stupid shit. Basically.

KAT:
Yeah, we end up with a lot of like, missing stairs, right? Like people who, like, this person sucks ass. Everybody knows they suck ass, that they're difficult to work with. They have to be handled in a specific way, but we just ignore that and like, work around them because they had like, one really important contribution. And 15 years ago, or because they're like forwarding a lot of like unwritten knowledge or something. But fuck that. Fuck that entirely. Like it's it creates like such a hostile environment for new people and anyone from an underrepresented group. Get the fuck rid of them. Like, don't let your missing stairs stick around just because they used to be important.

ADRIANA:
Exactly, exactly. Such an important thing to keep in mind. The other thing that I wanted to, dig into a little bit that you mentioned because, you said that you work with, a lot of, like, there's a lot of college students, contributing to open source, which is amazing. I, I love that that is a thing. Now, because, like, definitely when I was in college, I don't even I don't even know that, there was... I mean, open source was around for sure, but it was definitely, not something I was necessarily aware of or even, like, thought capable of contributing to. Like, it just never crossed my mind. And so the fact that we have these college students who are doing this sort of thing, like KubeCon, I think has like a cloud Native University track, or colo event, which like so cool, like it's really, focusing on, on bringing in this like young new talent, which I think is awesome.

KAT:
I think like universities must have changed their curriculum recently because we get like we get so many student applicants. And then the cloud native student, track at KubeCon is is pretty large. Like, it gets a lot of applicants too for for speakers. And the talks are usually pretty busy. So like, I think some universities must have adjusted their curriculum to put open source on there, or at least to put Kubernetes on the curriculum in some way, because it was a pretty like we've always had a few students. Right. Like really really particularly driven students who are like terminally online and aware of what's actually being used at companies today and not just staying glued to whatever their, school is teaching them. So there's always been a handful of them, but now it's like it's got to be. Sixty percent of applicants for the Kubernetes release team is students or like fresh grads. And so it's it is significant. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
I love that. I love like all that fresh perspective. And you know, they're not jaded yet by being...

KAT:
Oh god, yeah. They're still bright eyed and bushy tailed and hopeful. Right. Their their souls haven't been crushed. They haven't worked in like, the enterprise for a decade and lost their sparkle yet. So it's it's also it's revitalizing to work with people who are still like genuinely so excited about technology.

ADRIANA:
Yeah I, I agree, I agree and I'm one of the maintainers of the OpenTelemetry End User SIG, and we've had a couple of really fresh faces, fresh faces, like young, young, folks join our SIG regularly as contributors. And I love the energy that they bring, the enthusiasm, the like, “I'll take this on!” I'm like, “What? Yay!”

KAT:
Hell, yeah.

ADRIANA:
Bring it on, bring it on.

KAT:
Love that shit.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. I wanted to switch gears a bit, and talk about, like, your, your your day job, at Minimus, because you mentioned that you're, in cybersecurity. How did you get into that?

KAT:
This story is actually so stupid how I got this job. So the job market is terrible right now as we're recording this in 2025. Absolutely abysmal. I've been looking for a job for, like, six months. I live in the United Kingdom, and I needed visa sponsorship. And so that made things like, significantly harder and significantly slower. But this is a great example of why you should talk to people who are way more senior than you and try to be friends with people who are way more senior than you. Because I got this job out of a personal recommendation from somebody I met who was the CTO at a another friend's company, at an award ceremony at the House of Lords.

ADRIANA:
Wow. Damn.

KAT:
I was like, yeah, I was there to, win an award for, open source code contributor of the year for OpenUK, which is, a UK organization. I did not win. I got runner up. The person who won it absolutely did deserve it. But, I met this guy there. He already kind of knew who I was. Because I am friends with somebody who worked for him. And, when he went to this new company, Minimus, they they said they were looking for an experienced developer advocate. And he recommended me. I had never worked directly in cybersecurity before, but, I have a lot of friends who are in cybersecurity or are, relatively well known hackers. So, I already had the connections that they wanted, and I had a shitload of experience. And developer advocacy and very strongly held opinions about how it should be done.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

KAT:
From a developer advocacy standpoint. So there was no like, there was no fucking around. There was no, like, beating around the bush with what I thought needed to be done in the interviews. And they, liked the assertiveness.

ADRIANA:
That is amazing. I love that.

KAT:
There I ended, but it's still like it's it's a container cybersecurity company. So I was like, I do have relevant experience because I'm a Kubernetes maintainer, and I used to be, a software engineer, right. Specifically working with containers. So I have the dev experience, the user experience that they're looking for.

ADRIANA:
That's so cool. And I think this, this all brings I have this firm belief that, like, where we are now is a result of all the things, all the things that we've done before has have led us to now. And so, you know, you get to a certain point in your career and you're like, oh, this actually kind of makes sense.

KAT:
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I, I haven't actually been in tech for that long. I didn't get into tech until I was like already like very much an adult. Before that, I was trying not to be my dad. My dad's a software engineer, and we're, like, damn near the same person. So I was like, I got to have not my dad's job. I can't have the same job as my dad. So I screwed around and tried to do other stuff for a long time and it just, like, didn't work.

ADRIANA:
What was the other stuff that you did before tech?

KAT:
I was a bartender for a while at a strip club. So that was fun. But, I also worked at, a video rental store. So, like an indie, an independently owned video rental store, called Black Lodge Video was in Memphis, Tennessee. Whereas, like, the average Blockbuster would have like 600,000 titles in the store. We had like 40 something thousand.

ADRIANA:
Damn.

KAT:
Yeah. So in order to, like, recommend movies to customers, everybody had to kind of like pick a genre and that's, that's their genre. So for a few years, I got paid to just like watch horror movies and talk to people about horror movies and, when I, when I make enough money to leave tech and never come back, I am probably just going to go back to doing that because it was great. It was rad. You know, all I did was watch movies and talk about movies. That's all day.

ADRIANA:
Now. Do you have a particular favorite genre of horror movie? Do you prefer like the supernatural stuff or like the slasher flicks?

KAT:
So I like, I like psychological horror a lot, like, unreliable narrator type horror. I like when horror crosses over with sci-fi quite a lot. That's probably my favorite. So stuff like Event Horizon or Alien, Fright, where, like, you can argue that this is horror and you can argue that this is sci-fi. I like the, I like ghost stories, but not so much Western ghost stories. As much as I like Japanese or Korean ghost stories. Japan and Korea both had periods where they just, like, absolutely crushed the ghost story movie genre. That did a very, very good job with that. The French also had a period of time where they were churning gore in a really interesting way. And that, that, that was, that was a good period of horror movies for me.

But generally it's like sci-fi horror crossover or, psychological horror. Like, you can't tell if this is an unreliable narrator situation. Like, is this person possessed? Is this person actually insane? I know it's it's it's very fun to shit on, M. Night Shyamalan. There was there was a period where he was very predictable with the what a twist thing.

KAT:
Yeah, but, The Visit is genuinely, like, I don't get scared watching horror movies anymore, but that's the last time I can remember watching a movie and my stomach dropping. Like the twist in that one. I was like, oh fuck. Like, if you watch these kids are, these kids are so cooked, dude, that that's you can make fun of them for the what a twist thing all you want.

ADRIANA:
You know, Enjoy those movies. I still.

KAT:
Like, fuck.

ADRIANA:
Like, they they fuck with you.

KAT:
They really, really, really do. They do. And the The Happening had some really inventive death scenes as well.

ADRIANA:
Oh my God, that one.

KAT:
Like, the lawnmower thing.

ADRIANA:
Hurting my brain. Like, for real. I can... because I was the one with the. Wasn't that the one with the plants? Like... yeah... I can never I couldn't really look at plants the same way.

KAT:
Yeah. Because they want to murder you. You know, or they want to make you murder you. It's what's actually going on. God damn, that man can crank out a really unpleasant movie.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

KAT:
We're all so mad at him for Avatar. But if he can go back to just making, like, really upsetting horror movies that’s... he. He kills it.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, I totally roll with genre. I...

KAT:
Yeah.

ADRIANA:
It's so cool. I love the, the breadth in the in the career. You know, my, my dad also is in tech, and, he used, like, a software architect for many, many years. He's retired. And when I graduated university, I ended up working at the same company as him. We both worked at Accenture, for, for brief a period, and it was.

And that's where I met my husband, too. So it was the three of us working there. And, you know, it wasn't until I left, like, the whole time I was there. Like, they're both really smart. My my husband is also in tech. And I spent the entire time trying to live up to them to be just like them.

And it wasn't until I left and realized, oh, I can forge my own path. And then that's when I started to actually find myself in tech. But like, I, I can totally understand the, you know, avoid, avoid following in the footsteps.

KAT:
Yeah.

ADRIANA:
Because it's so...

KAT:
I don’t even I don't write any of the same languages my dad does. Even. So, like, I don't I don't know what I was so worried about, but he he didn't believe I was a real programmer until I learned a compiled language, though, like, he thought that Python did not count. JavaScript did not count. I had to learn something compiled for it to count. You know, we got there eventually. We got there eventually. But he, he he took a while to call me an actual software engineer because of that one.

ADRIANA:
So what ended up getting you into tech after after, like, dabbling in various areas?

KAT:
I have been, like, doing it as a side hustle, in that I was like, I was building WordPress and Joomla templates for people. As a side hustle because, like, bartending in the state of Tennessee pays you $2.13 an hour plus tips.

ADRIANA:
Ouch. Were the tips good?

KAT:
No.

ADRIANA:
Oh, shit.

KAT:
No. This is like.

ADRIANA:
Technically.

KAT:
Legally if you don't make it up to federal minimum wage. Over the course of a pay period, 725 an hour, you report that and your employer is supposed to pay you the difference. But the reality is that if you do that, you're just going to get fired, right?

ADRIANA:
Right.

KAT:
Right. So like yeah. So it didn't it didn't pay great. And while I loved working at Black Lodge video, it also didn't pay great. So I was I was doing a side hustle and, I got one really, really beefy contract, for a sports association. It was the most expensive contract I had had at that point. It was, ten grand, which doesn't sound like a lot of money now, but at the time, it was like a life changing quantity of money for me. And I thought, man. Maybe I have to actually commit to this. So I, I went to a coding bootcamp. I had moved to Seattle at that point, because my, my husband at the time was a fencing coach, and he, he took a job with the fencing club there. But, I went to a coding academy. I went to Code Fellows and learned Python and, my first job was not, like, super well paying for Seattle for junior, it was $60,000. But that was so, like many, many times more money than I had ever seen in my bank account. Yeah. You know, so it was, it was kind of hard to leave after that, like suddenly being able to pay off like old medical debt and stuff was pretty. Well, it was it was hard to be mad at that. That one $10k contract made me go, okay, you know, like, maybe like, I'm good at this, obviously. I enjoy doing this and, it it pays, you know, it pays better than working in a video store. It pays better than bartending. And it will continue to pay, whereas, you know, service industry roles are notoriously, like, not very stable. I don't know what I would have done if I was still in the service industry during Covid.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, that... that was brutal for folks in the service industry.

KAT:
Yeah, I would have been so fucked. Right? Like many, many people were fucked.

ADRIANA:
So absolutely.

KAT:
You know, it was a good choice. And, I have accepted that. I just am my dad, and that's okay. You know, my dad is cool as hell, so. He's retired. He lives, on the beach in Mississippi in, a in a house on stilts. And, all he does is hang out with his dog that he found out on the side. The the highway. He makes soap that he sells at a farmers market, and he watches like the Real Housewives.

ADRIANA:
Damn.

KAT:
He's he's very happy. He's, like, really living the dream. I'll call him. And it's the 2 p.m. there, and he's like, drinking a martini with his dog. I’m like, so.

ADRIANA:
That is a chill life.

KAT:
Yeah. So he's he's got it. He's got a pretty good, you know, and like I, I would like that to be me when I'm 70. Yeah. Yeah for sure for sure.

ADRIANA:
That's cool I like that. You know, I, I could just keep going and going. I've, I've had so much fun chatting with you today. We are coming up on time, but before we, we wrap things up, I was wondering if there is any words of wisdom or spicy takes, that you wanted to impart.

KAT:
Spicy take as a Kubernetes maintainer. Sometimes Kubernetes is, like, fully not correct for your use case. Don't over complicate it like, you don't... You don't need to throw Kubernetes at it straight out the the fucking gate. Also, you should probably not be rolling your own cluster. You should be using a managed service. You you absolutely should not roll your own cluster unless you are very, very sure that you know what you're doing personally. Or you have like $300,000 a year laying around to pay somebody who knows what they're doing to administrate your cluster. Otherwise, please use a managed service. Do not roll your own.

ADRIANA:
I am fully supportive of that. Absolutely. And on your your first statement of like it. Kubernetes might not suit your use case. There. There is definitely, there was definitely a huge influx of people who are like, we must use Kubernetes because it is The Thing. Yeah.

KAT:
It is a cool thing, but it is also so much more work than is necessary for some things.

ADRIANA:
Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. And, very, very great. Spicy take, very important to, to educate the folks out there. So, yeah, I really appreciate it. Well, thank you so much, Kat, for geeking out with me today. And y'all, don't forget to subscribe and be sure to check the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media. Until next time.

KAT:
Peace out and geek out.

ADRIANA:
Geeking Out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Villela. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking Out is also produced by my daughter Hannah Maxwell, who, incidentally, designed all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the socials by going to bento.me/geekingout.

The One Where We Geek Out on Managing Burnout with Denise Yu

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Adriana Villela, Hannah Maxwell, Denise Yu) — Tue, 3 Jun 2025 04:00:00 +0000

Key takeaways:

Job hopping at a young age can help you better understand what you like and what you're good at
Doing meaningful and impactful work keeps us engaged and not bored at work and hating our lives
Burnout happens more often in tech than we care to admit, and one way to cope with it is by doing an activity that you're not good at
Normalizing talking about mental health at work gives others a safe space to take care of their own mental health
Tips for concentrating: activities with low cognitive load can help you concentrate better on primary activities
Discovering your own leadership style and what works for you helps you become a successful manager
Jumping off the IC track too early to get into management can hurt you as a manager in the long run

About our guest:

Denise is an Engineering Manager at HashiCorp and a professional margin-scribbler. She's been using sketchnotes and comics for the last few years to make concepts in engineering more accessible and fun.

Find our guest on:

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show notes:

Transcript:
ADRIANA:
Okay. Hey, fellow geeks. Welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery DevOps, observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela. Coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And geeking out with me today is Denise Yu of HashiCorp. Welcome, Denise.

DENISE:
Thanks so much, Adriana. Very excited to be here.

ADRIANA:
I'm excited too. And where are you calling from?

DENISE:
I'm also in Toronto. We're neighbors.

ADRIANA:
Yes. Yeah. I always say on the podcast, I always get very excited when I have a fellow Torontonians on. We need, you know, we need to get some good representation in Canada.

DENISE:
Yes, yes, we are only 10% of the Cana... Actually, no, I think I think the GTA is 20% of the Canadian population.

ADRIANA:
AV: Oh, damn. That's. Yeah.

DENISE:
I mean, we are there's a lot of us, actually.

ADRIANA:
There are a lot of us. Well, with that, I think this is a great segway to get into our lightning round questions.

DENISE:
Let's do it.

ADRIANA:
Ready... Okay, let's let's see how lightning they are. They may or may not be. I roll with it. Okay, first question, are you a lefty or a righty?

DENISE:
I am right handed.

ADRIANA:
Okay. Do you prefer iPhone or Android?

DENISE:
I have an iPhone. I don't really know how to use Android anymore, but every time I try to use my friend's Android phone, I end up calling her mom by accident. I just don't know how to use it. So I'm going to go iPhone for the, like, basic reason: I know how to use an iPhone.

ADRIANA:
And it's funny because my my mom, had, an Android for a hot minute because even though my dad had an... he had an iPhone for work. That was his primary cell phone. He decides he's going to buy my mom a freaking Android. My mom was computer illiterate. Like, who would any, like, any panic. Like, if she hit the wrong thing on a phone and it took her to a different screen, it would be. Like, oh my God, my phone is broken. I'm like. So she’d call me for tech support on her Android. And it's like, okay, if I if I'm there physically with your phone, I can probably figure it out. But like you calling me, I have an iPhone. I have no frickin’ clue what's going on here.

DENISE:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's not just her. I consider myself pretty, pretty tech literate. And I also struggle.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, it's a bit of. It's a bit of a maze. I ended up buying her an iPhone eventually because I'm like, oh, I can't deal with this. You have an iPad get... Let's get you an iPhone, mom.

DENISE:
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. All right, next question. Do you prefer Mac, Linux, or Windows?

DENISE:
Oh, you know, I don't do that much development anymore, because I'm a manager now, but, for development, I think my brain is just most attuned to using Macs. I've developed in a Linux environment before, but, just having to think about every piece of software that you want to download does get in the way. I think. Yeah. So yeah, I'm going to I'm going to go with the, the boring answer here and say, Mac, I'm best at using Macs for development and otherwise, these days.

ADRIANA:
All right. Down for it, down for it. Yeah. Linux is fun. If you're, like, fiddling around, I find, I mean, I, I've, I've interviewed people who are like, yeah, Linux.

DENISE:
Yeah.

ADRIANA:
You know, I've had fun with Linux, but like, sometimes when all I need is for the damn thing to work...

DENISE:
Yes, exactly.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Yeah. So. Okay. Next question. What's your favorite programing language?

DENISE:
Ooh. I trained as a Ruby developer, so I feel like Ruby still has a place near and dear to my heart. I think Ruby is the most fun language to do little toy projects and do prototyping in. It's still like my brain's first programing language. So I think if I'm going to start a new project and I don't want to think too hard about what frameworks I'm going to use or like, if I want to just get straight to the part where I start solving the problem and writing tests and everything and seeing something working, I'm still going to choose Ruby for that today.

ADRIANA:
That's cool.

DENISE:
Yeah. I like Ruby. I don't actually, I haven't used that many programing languages. I'm not one of those polyglot people. So I've used JavaScript. Because I was a web developer for a lot of my career. Picked up Golang a couple of years ago. That was pretty fun. It's a good, nice, fast language. Very opinionated. Which is. Which is nice.

ADRIANA:
I appreciate that about Go.

DENISE:
Yeah. And I've done a couple of projects in Go. Everything in HashiCorp is in go. So I think, like, Go literacy is a great skill to have, especially if you work in the infrastructure ops space today and you're looking to build tools because there probably is already a Go package for the thing that you're trying to do that you can just import. I was a Rails developer for a bunch of years. Worked at GitHub, did some Rails at pretty serious GitHub scale for a little while. So I know that, sometimes when you have like a huge monolith and especially if you're trying to coordinate with like tons and tons and tons of different teams, and you want to make sure that every, you know, every single query that goes out is performant. Sometimes, like using you typically people use like Ruby in production. They're using Rails in production underneath that. So I think like some of the challenges I've seen with Rails at that kind of scale is, active record is just so magical. It's like the main thing you have to use when you're interfacing with with SQL databases, but when it goes wrong, it goes really wrong. And you spend a lot of time untangling the magic of active record. So that's my only kind of caveat. Like if I'm working on a real production system today, I think like there are definitely a number of scenarios where doing everything in Ruby, through everything in Rails, can slow you down at a certain point. But I think that probably is true for any programing language. code base large enough, there just is more coordination and more context switching that you're going to deal with, especially if it's, you know, ideally, it's not just you working on this model at this, you at like a couple dozen or a couple hundred other people.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, that's a very fair point, especially when you're working at such a large organization, which is like very jarring when you go from like small organization to large one where you're like, oh my God, I have to coordinate with all these people.

DENISE:
Yeah. Like my first job was in Rails and it was me and three other developers. And I remember, in the same day, I could say like, oh, I have an idea for something like, what if I built this new, you know, view for our teachers or whatever, and it's just like, go talk to the product manager, get him on board, explain why it's important. He's like, okay, cool, greenlit. Happy for you to spend a day on this. And within the day, you know, the features in production. So that's kind of fun and nice. But yeah, the bigger the company, the bigger the product, the bigger the code base. That's often not feasible.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah. I, I worked I worked at a bank for 11 years and... let me tell you...

DENISE:
Yeah. And then banks and, you know, like, they have all this extra compliance and regulatory stuff that you have to make sure you're on the correct side of the line on for everything.

ADRIANA:
Exactly. Yeah. And I think, like for me, and like before I worked at the bank, I had worked, like kind of a medium-sized startup-y sort of company. And so, you know, I went from like, of course I have access to the Prod database to... You have somebody who manages the UAT database and somebody who manages the Prod database. And yeah, you can like mostly touch the Dev database, but we also have someone who manages that too.

DENISE:
Wow. Okay, so layer is on layers on layers of [...]

ADRIANA:
There were so many layers. And it was funny because I like purposely moved to a large organization because my thought was like, this is too disorganized for me, I need structure. And then I moved to this bank. I'm like. This is too structured for me. Yeah. Can't win, can't win.

DENISE:
Yeah. Well, I think. It's important to like one piece of advice that I always give people who are earlier career than me is like, jump around a little bit. You know, like you, the only way to figure out what kind of job you're going to enjoy is to experience all, you know, different types. So I often encourage people, like, if you're early career and you're, you know, you're looking at job hop because you feel like you're not learning enough or you feel like you could make more money elsewhere, which like, that is, by the way, always true.

Yeah. It's true that especially early career, you will get paid higher faster if you job hop. Just like career progression within companies is often just not set up to aggressively retain talent on pay. But I always like, try to encourage people. I'm like, well, if you're, if you're bored because you're not learning anything, optimize for change, right? Like whatever the next place you go, pick something that's radically different from what you're working on now. So if you're at a startup, then go go to a more established company. Or if you're in, you know, like the education space. Go work in something. You know, go work in. I don't even know, like something that's like a software as a service or do something that's radically different.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. That's such really great advice. Like it it it actually resonated so much with me because during my, during my stint at this bank, I was there for five years. And then I'm like, I've had it with technology and I quit my job to become a professional photographer. Did that for a year and then realized, oh my God, why? Why? But it gave me like it gave me different. It gave me really good skills, actually. That worked out very well for later in my career and now also for DevRel. And then I ended up working there another like six years or so. But, yeah, I mean, and it happened like part of the reason why I quit was I was like, so unbelievably bored with my job. I'm like, yeah, like, I can sit here and do, like, not much and I'll get paid. But I hate my life right now.

DENISE:
Yeah. Oh my gosh, that that resonates with me so hard. I feel like. A lot of, like a lot of women that I meet in the tech industry have this. We have this affliction where we just can't coast. And I don't. Know what it is. I, I've was just I met. So many women who are like, you know, you're in a cushy job. There is no threat of you being laid off or fired or anything. Right now, your job is pretty easy. Maybe the people you work with are kind of annoying or hard to deal with. Maybe you feel like the work's not super impactful, but it's easy and you're getting a good paycheck. What is wrong with us that we can't just accept those two things?

And like, I've also. Been in that position and I was like my brain is contracting. I am becoming worse at engineering. I'm losing my feeling of being plugged into the industry and to other people. And I need to go. I need to go off and I need to do something else. I need to feel like my brain is switched on.

ADRIANA:
Yes. Yeah, that that's the perfect way to describe it. And maybe it's, it I don't know about you, but, like, I've, I've got ADHD and, like, my brain, like it was too much for my brain. I'm like, this is, like, so fucking boring. I can't I can't take it anymore. And I needed I also needed to, like, I have this need to feel like I need to be productive almost to a fault. Like, if I, I have days where I feel like I'm unproductive, even though I've actually been productive. But like... That did not help.

DENISE:
Yeah. No, I've. I've quite literally like, gone to therapy for this issue, but, like, I just cannot sit and do nothing. I can't just relax and let a good thing be. I was really burned out back in 2020, right before the pandemic hit. So I left my job and the pandemic hit. And then I joined Microsoft slash GitHub, which in March 2020, it's a complete, like tangent, but March 2020. Fantastic time to join Microsoft and get that historically low strike price. And the only regret I have is like selling my RSUs way too early because now. Microsoft is doing so well. I don't like, I should have held, but I'm always like, just offload these RSUs. It's just like, get them off me. I'm not incurring any risk of the company. Just give me my money. But anyway, back in 2020, yeah, I, I left my previous job, and, before I joined GitHub, I, I was so burnt out at that last job that I quite literally have, like, memory loss from the last [...]

ADRIANA:
Oh my god.

DENISE:
Yeah. I think this, you know, getting to that stage of burnout happens pretty often in tech, right? You always want to say yes to things like, you never want to pass up an opportunity or put like, now I look back on. Then I realized that's what setting boundaries means. But I didn't do it at the time. I didn't have that language or that skill set at the time. But yeah, I was really, really, really burnt out. And my therapist worked with me on she was like, I'm going to, I'm going to set you a challenge, and you have to find an activity that relaxes you that is not outcome oriented. I asked, what do you mean? She's like,Do something that you suck at. And don't worry about the result. But what if I got good at it? Yeah. And she was like, what? So every week she would ask me, like, what did you do this week? And I was like, I tried to learn the guitar, but I suck at it. She was like, that is the point. So something that you. Suck at and do it for the sake of the process, not the outcome. So I think. That is such. That is such a hard rewiring of the brain for overachievers and. Probably for ADHD brains like us.

ADRIANA:
Yes. Yeah, that's that is so incredibly true because we we and and there's there's the instant gratification. Like you start something and you have to be amazing at it.

DENISE:
Yeah.

ADRIANA:
Right away. And then if you're amazing at something naturally, it's like, whatever it was like it wasn't hard. So then you downplay your own amazingness because it was too easy for you. Because you're actually talented at something.

DENISE:
Yeah, exactly. Like if you've been, I don't know, like my, my mom, I was the kind of kid that was signed up for everything because I also have an overachiever parent. And so I think like that, that this is the the drive to do a lot of things and try to be good at a lot of things is so deeply ingrained in my brain, I don't think I will ever work out of my system, but, I did a lot of music and art as a kid.

Music, because my mom thought it was a good idea for me to play instruments. Therefore I would have a stronger college application. I was five, but she signed me up for piano lessons. I think in the back of her mind being like, one day this will get her into university.

ADRIANA:
That's hilarious. Now do you do you still like piano?

DENISE:
I still enjoy it. I don't practice every day by any stretch of the imagination. I play in a very, very casual, like, jam band with some friends once a month. We just cover. We don't have, like, a it's not a real band. So we don't have like, any social... anything. But this actually was one of the things that I, you know, I have been trying to internalize this advice of do something that has no output, right? Do something for the love of the process. And so I thought, okay, I want to push myself out of my comfort zone. I want to do something that's fun with my friends. So what if I set up this jam band and just, like, invite everybody over every, like, once a month? We play whatever instruments we want. So one person, you know, usually plays bass guitar, but the other day he brought in a saxophone. He was like, I have a, you know, I have a saxophone in my house. I know a little bit. I'm going to learn the saxophone part to “Valerie” by Amy Winehouse at this place. And like, you know, there's no expectation. We all sound pretty good because a lot of us do play music or played music a lot as kids. So we're not like, beginners.

ADRIANA:
Yeah

DENISE:
We cover the songs like well enough to feel satisfied that, you know, it sounds good and my neighbors won’t complain. But I don't know. It's been a really fun and rewarding kind of like, side hobby over the past year or so. Yeah. Try trying to play play music for the process and not. I mean, at this point, I'm not getting into a university, you know, like that. That part of my not working or anything, not going to become like a recording musician at this point.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. That's such a really good point. And, it, you know, it's and going back to the burnout, like, so prevalent in our industry, like it's, it's ridiculous, like to the point where when I talk, when I talk to my therapist about burnout, she's like, yeah, there's a lot of burnout in your industry. I'm like. Oh, shit. She must deal with a lot of us, then. Like, okay, this is common. For for you. Like, what are what were the internal signs like where you started feeling like you were, burning out. Like what? What were the tells for you?

DENISE:
Usually I don't notice them. It's my partner who notices them. Yeah. So I if I lived on my own, I think I was just never notice. Eventually my mom would call me and be like, hey, what's going on? But my my partner has told me that, just my, I don't sleep very much. I, my, I mean, I'm still showering every day, but I'm not, like, picking up as many chores around the house. I'm not keeping the house as clean as it could be. I am, you know, leaving a lot of laundry on the floor instead of, like, putting it away in the laundry basket and things, like the normal functioning things, just take a lot longer to get done. Dishes won't be put away, laundry won't be put away, that sort of thing. But those are kind of like, behavioral things. But I think mentally I just go to a very withdrawn place, like, it becomes very hard to have a deep conversation with me. I'm like artificially happy. I'm like, cool, cool, cool. But I don't, you know, it's hard for me to engage meaningfully with people and with activities that I used to enjoy.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, that's that's such a really good point because I, I find for myself too, like when, when, like I'm in a funk. I definitely get. Very. Withdrawn and I get quiet. And, I'm yappy at home.

DENISE:
Yeah.

ADRIANA:
So when I get quiet, it's like. And so, like, you know, I've gotten into this habit, like my, my husband can notice. And he, he’ll... and my daughter too. And and they'll go like, are you okay? And, you know, in the past there was like, I’m fine. Which.

DENISE:
Yeah.

ADRIANA:
Not okay. Yeah. And now I'm trying to get into the habit of, like, saying, no, I'm not okay. And this is what I'm feeling and trying to be a little bit more like, introspective about my feelings and maybe just trying to understand, like, my triggers as well.

DENISE:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. My previous manager, I've talked about burnout pretty extensively with. I'm like pretty open about this. I try to be open about it at work, too, and I think it's really important if you're in a leadership position, like if you're a team leader or a manager or a director, I think like being a little bit vulnerable about mental health is actually a positive thing. There obviously is a limit you don't want to like use your 1 to 1 time with your report. It's like unloading about how badly you're doing. I don't think that’s, you know, super appropriate.

ADRIANA:
I agree. I agree.

DENISE:
But, you know, saying like, hey team, I need a mental health day. Doing that periodically is actually really important, and it contributes to creating like an environment where other people can also find the support that they need from their peers. If that is something that helps them.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, I, I agree. Yeah. Normalizing it for your team is... The boss is doing it. Therefore it's okay for me to do it.

DENISE:
Yeah, exactly. I, some of the things that I, you know, you don't realize a lot of these things, like, are not noticeable in the moment because your own capacity for sensing and reflecting is so limited when you're in the midst of burnout. But looking back on that time, I'm like, yeah, like I mentioned, I quite literally have memory loss from there were things that my, my partner will say, oh, you, that was a really tough time for you. These are all the things that happened. I was like, wow, three of those five things I do not remember happening. Like, there's some former colleagues who who joined, you know, the Toronto office, in the last, like 4 or 5 months. And I was there, some of them have reached out to me on LinkedIn, just, like, casually over the years. So, hey, remember when we used to work together and I'll be like, yes, I'll type. Yes. Hey, how are you doing? Like, I have no recollection of who you are. That's so bad. Like, according to LinkedIn, we did both physically work in the same office three years, but I have literally have no recollection of any conversation we've ever had.

ADRIANA:
It’s basically like a trauma in your brain and you.

DENISE:
Kind of....

ADRIANA:
And you’ve pushed it away. That's. Yeah, I think it is. It's funny because like on a similar vein, like, you know, my, my sister and I like we're three years apart and we'll be like reminiscing on stuff of the past and I'm like, I'll be like, oh, do you remember this, this and this? She's like, no, but do you remember this, this and this? And I'm like, no. So it’s like, different things are significant to us. Different things are like traumatic enough to remember or traumatic enough to forget.

DENISE:
Yeah. That's funny.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Right. Oh, we still have some, lightning round question.

DENISE:
Okay, let's do it.

ADRIANA:
Okay. Next question. I'm sure it'll like, it'll it'll result in in in some nice tangents, which I absolutely love. Okay. Next one. Do you prefer Dev or Ops?

DENISE:
Ooh. Interesting question. I think in my heart of hearts, I am still a dev that loves to ship features. I work at, because it's funny, because I worked in the kind of cloud infrastructure, cloud software as a service space for a bunch of years. I was at Pivotal for three and a half years. GitHub was was feature dev, the work that I was doing there was feature dev, but now I'm at HashiCorp. I'm back kind of in the, the, you know, cloud cloud services seat. So I've had a lot of time to learn cloud operations and get, you know, get good in that skill set. And I think I have a lot more context and appreciation for what that function is at big companies and how to make, you know, cloud teams, platform teams successful. But I think when it comes to my personal practice, the kind of work that I find really fulfilling is user facing work and not not that like ops is not user facing. Absolutely. Like your internal dev teams are your customers and you know that is customer facing work. But I just really I think like I think app development is still the thing. If I were to go back to doing IC work today, that is probably what I would still do.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah. Fair enough. Yeah, I, I, I kind of, I, I on my side I kind of love both. I, like, app development was like kind of my first love.

DENISE:
Yeah.

ADRIANA:
It will always have. A special part is special place in in my heart for that reason. But yeah. But also like I love the idea of, like, I can code and like, bring up infrastructure. What? So wonderful. Who’da thought. Okay. Next question. Do you prefer JSON or YAML?

DENISE:
I feel like you can... YAML is more human readable in my opinion, but JSON doesn't try to say that Norway’s country code is a boolean. Have you ever run into them before we are designing a drop down? Yeah. If you, I ran into this a couple times and a GitHub, I was working on a feature called Issue Forms, which I think is still in production, but, basically we let, repo maintainers configure a YAML file. And within that YAML file you can define like parameters for, for generating a web form and their web form, it's like users have to fill out instead of a free flow markdown text box when they submit a new issue. It was like came off of it. It's like a longstanding feature. Requests from, the early days to GitHub. But two years ago we finally had the chance to implement it. And so I spent a lot of time researching config and going really deep on like, yes, YAML, the right way to do this. Should we make up our own bizarro like markdown hybrid thing built upon, like GitHub flavored markdown? Should we use JSON Should we use something else? Ultimately we landed on YAML because enough of the other config configuration driven things like GitHub actions were written in YAML already on the platform. But yeah, we did a lot of research and if you so like one of the things we wanted to to give operators the ability to do or like repo maintainers, the ability to do is like define a dropdown with with pretext values in it.

So oftentimes you want to you want to ask your issue opener in an issue like, did you read my code of conduct, or do you agree to the community standards and this sort of thing. And you can do like a checkbox, but you could also do like a yes or no dropdown. So if you put “no”, YAML casts N-O, as a string, uppercase or lowercase or a mix, that gets cast into a boolean, that gets saved in, the Ruby library, that parses YAML will treat it as a boolean. So when you go and you try to do string operations on a like, you know, string-dot-count or string-dot whatever, it throws a runtime error. So I don't know, there's. Just like a lot of these, there's so many weird cursed pieces of knowledge. And the same will be true if you're designing like a dropdown menu. You're like, what's your country code? Right? And Norway is N-O, it's like randomly in the middle of all your other country codes. There's a boolean value. And that will only ever break using any kind of, you know, YAML parser library in most languages. Type safe languages are probably a little bit better at this. I imagine it probably is better in Go, but Ruby's not type safe. Ruby is just, you know, you can do whatever you want, so dynamically typed languages and YAML are, a just source of such cursed individual pieces of knowledge like that.

ADRIANA:
Oh, damn, I had not encountered that before. Okay, okay. Today I learned. Okay. Next question. Do you prefer spaces or tabs?

DENISE:
I think I'm. I'm in spaces person. Tabs just show up inconsistently, and I'm kind of like, I don't know this. We might as well just go for consistency, I think. And I think spaces are more likely to be consistent. I don't know. I don't really have super strong feelings on this.

ADRIANA:
But it's definitely that's definitely a very compelling argument for spaces. And that's a the other thing too is like when you when you commit your code, like, who knows, who knows how it will end up. And then, you know, especially on different machines, right. Like a Linux machine versus a Windows versus a Mac, like there's always that aspect to it. So, yes.

DENISE:
Yeah, exactly.

ADRIANA:
Cool. Okay. Two more questions. Do you prefer consuming content through video or text?

DENISE:
I'm leaning more towards video consumption these days. Because I, I find it really hard to just sit and read things or to sit and write, which is challenging because as a manager, often a lot of the tasks that you have to do are sit here and read this document and give feedback or sit here and write this document. So I struggle with that activity. I think this is probably like, ADHD, or some element of that. So watching a video helps me, because I can, I found that if it's something that I really, really need my brain to ingest, I will often try, like taking notes or sketching noting or doing something that's not like a full brain activity while I'm listening to content. Lately, I found that playing Stardew Valley.... Stardew Valley and Animal Animal Crossing are both like low context enough games you can just, like, sit there and fish or whatever. You don't need to think a lot about what's going on in the game. You can listen to a video or listen to, listen to audio and then still, keep enough enough, like processing cycles in your brain going.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it's interesting that you mention that because, my daughter was saying how, like, there's certain activities. Oh, yeah, it was reading because she said she has a really hard time, like just sitting down and reading, and she says that it's very helpful to put on music while she reading. So it sounds like a very similar sort of thing.

DENISE:
Yeah. Yeah, I like music too, but not music with words, because then my brain fixates on the words.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, I, I agree, I, I think she does music with words which like my thought was, oh my God, I'd start like, you know, bursting into song like, I'll like start singing along spontaneously and it's like, oh.

DENISE:
Yeah, exactly. So it's got to be like, I, I do like video game music sometimes that actually helps because supposedly video game soundtrack music is optimized for concentration.

ADRIANA:
Oh, interesting.

DENISE:
Yeah, I think I had a long time ago. I don't know if it's actually true. Maybe I'm just repeating something that's like video game industry propaganda. But, I, you know, understand that a lot of video game music is intended to promote focus so that you can solve the problem or like, you know, figure out this dungeon or whatever.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah. Well, if it's true, that's that's quite interesting.

DENISE:
I don't know. I end up listening to a lot of, like, drum and bass. Like club music. Or or, listen to music in a language you don't understand.

ADRIANA:
Oh yeah...

DENISE:
Yeah, like animé music. Like everything's in Japanese.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, that's such a cool idea. I find electronica, is really helpful, like when I'm coding because it’s upbeat. And so it's like it gets you in the groove.

DENISE:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I find like motivational music is very important. So sometimes if I'm doing a house task like cleaning the bathroom or folding laundry, I'm like, I, I think this is only going to take five minutes, but I can't like I just can't think about dealing with this. So I need I need some motivational Kelly Clarkson to get me through this activity.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, exactly. Like just something to lift your spirits because it it makes such a huge difference. Like, I'll be in a shitty mood and then, like, if I hear a good song, I'm like, all right. Okay. Final question. What is your superpower?

DENISE:
I think, my superpower is that I can organize people. I, I, I'm pretty sure I always tell people like, I'm pretty sure I was a border collie in a past life or something. Like one of those dogs that really wants all the humans to be in the same room together. Like in my field of vision. I need to, like, herd you, like, like a flock of sheep.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

DENISE:
Because I think, like, if I had to describe my personality in one sentence, it would be that, like, I like, like getting people together, putting together events, even, like, at work. This translates a little bit to, like, I really want, I don't know, at my core, I think I'm actually a very simple human, like, when it comes to work or how I interact with other people. Fundamentally, I just want two things, and that I want people to be happy and I want everyone to like each other. And those are two, like, incredibly basic and I think borderline crazy and naïve kind of ideals. But, I don't know, like, I have done a lot of reflecting over the course of my career around like, what does leadership look like, right? Like read all the manuals, read all the books done, you know, gone to the conferences and there's like all sorts of tools that you can have in your toolbox, and there's all these like, styles of management that you can adhere to or not. But I kind of realized, like at the end of the day, my programing is that I am a people pleaser. Maybe a lot of that is socialization because women are socialized to want to make people happy.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah.

DENISE:
But in terms of like the energy that I tried to bring to work and to, you know, my, my personal life, I have this, like, idealistic belief that people have the capacity to everyone has the capacity to like each other and want to get along. I think people fundamentally want to get along.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah. It's so true. And people want to belong.

DENISE:
Exactly. Everyone wants belonging, right? And of course, like everyone has a different relationship to work and professionalism. Some people just want to turn up for eight hours, do their work and go home, and that's fine. But honestly, like the majority of people that I've met over my career have, I think like people perform better when they have a sense of belonging and inclusion. And the only way that you can really build that in a sustainable way is like, get the relationship foundation sorted out, right, like facilitate, create environments. People can get to know each other as human beings, where people can build trust. So that's why I'm kind of like, you know, border collie, like trying to just get people into the same room. Like, I hate one of my pet peeves is like seeing people talk past each other in slack. Drives me crazy. It drives me nuts. And then like the the people are going back and forth, they're talking past each other for like days on end now.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

DENISE:
They need to just get into the same room and just talk things out.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, it's so true. And it sounds to me too, like it's almost like you're this aspect of your personality is like pretty much primed you to be a manager, I think.

DENISE:
So I didn't at first I thought, people pleasing was a weakness. When I first became a manager, and people would, you know, I got a lot of. I feel like anytime you switch roles, you get a lot of unsolicited advice, right? People reach out to you, like, and let me know how it can help. Sometimes, like, they do want to help, and that's great. But sometimes they just want to tell you, like, here's how I lead, here's how I manage. This is the best way that I found to, like, get your team to deliver, and that's fine. Like, there's different styles of leadership and management that might work for some people. But I think, early on in my career, I made the mistake of just taking on board every piece of advice.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah.

DENISE:
Someone told me, like, put up really firm boundaries with your reports. Early on, I was like, okay. So I like, messed up a bunch in early one, two months by telling people, here are the things that I can help you with. Here are the things I probably can't help you with. And I thought.You know, like, it's this healthy boundary setting, like, no, this actually is kind of telling people like, fuck you, if you say these things to me early on. That's how this lands, until you get really, really, really good at doing that kind of messaging, which I was not early on. But yeah, like one of the, the a lot of the advice I got was like, you know, protect your own sanity, like figure out what you have control over and figure out what you don't have control over. You can control your own reactions to things. Can't control your feelings, can't control other people's feelings. So don't ever try to make everyone happy all the time. And I think there's still a lot of truth in that. There's still a lot of good advice around taking care of yourself that's contained within that. But the more that I've sort of, like, allowed myself to be myself at work, I have allowed myself to get sillier and have more fun with the things that we have to do. So I was like, very serious early on. I was like by the book, like, here's the company process, here's how I work, and reading material. Here's what I expect from you by this date. And I think like that is a style that absolutely can work for a lot of people. But what I've discovered is, like, we all have to do these, you know, like there are many ways to get from point A to point B, where point B is like, your team outputting a certain amount by a certain time.

There's like the by the book path, but also maybe there's a more fun path. Right? So yeah, things I, I did, I could have, as I talked a lot about how I wanted to give the team a framework for thinking about like, how much time should we spend on work that's not committed. So like, check that work or interrupt based work or at work that comes from community feedback. So the framework I came up with was like, well, everyone's on a main quest, right? So if you play an RPG like Final Fantasy or whatever, you have your main quest, you need to go to the castle and defeat the villain or whatever, rescue the princess. But then along the way, you're allowed to do a lot of side quests.

You can pick up any number of side quests that you want. But the difference between real life and game is like in the game, you can take as long as you want to finish the main quest. That's fine. In reality, we have to finish the main quest by this date. So with that in mind, like you can on board side quests in the meantime, but I'm going to check in with you each week.

I'm like, what's your balance of time between the main quest and your side quests? And if it's like you're 100% side questing, well, maybe we got to reorient for next week. You know, maybe we need to move that ratio a little bit. So I don't know. I found that like the more I've let myself be myself and be geeky and be silly and talk about things like RPGs and like gaming and Taylor Swift and things like that. In team meetings, like I, I also recently, in my current role, I, there was an internal rework and I basically run two teams. I was told to try to make them function as one team. And so, one thing that I did early on was I got everyone in the same room and I'm like, put up a picture of, the members of, the band Audioslave, which is a super group. And then I put up a picture of Broken Social Scene, which is also a supergroup made up many different Canadian indie bands. And I was like, what? What do these people have in common? And nobody knew who anyone in the pictures. I was like, I’ll tell you. This is Audioslave in this Broken Social Scene. And they were like, oh yeah, we still don't get it. Super groups like we are a super group. I don't know that they bought it, but I don't know, like I think leaning into being a little bit silly and just letting yourself have fun with the, you know, the work that's in front of you is really important. And it's a way to make, you know, this thing that we have to do this thing for capitalism, right? We have to participate in society by earning money. So you might as well make the process our own.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, I, I totally agree. And, I so, so relate to what you're saying because I found, like for years I had, you know, I, and I think to a certain extent we all have like the work persona and the at home persona. But I think letting more of like my at home persona bleed into my work persona so that I'm more comfortable and then that makes other people more comfortable around me and put them at ease, because I think there's like, I think traditionally, you know, in our parents generation, there's this sort of like very stiff, stiff upper lip sort of upper workplace. And it's, you know, we all dressed up in, in suits and stuff and it's like you can't swear literally at work and. Blah blah blah. And I feel like those times are a changing. And we gotta roll with it because, like, I don't know, like I always thought the idea of, like, sitting in a suit to code was like, ridiculous. It just makes my brain break. And like, I worked in consulting for four years, first four years of my career and and like, they had a very strict dress code. It was like it was business casual. So like the idea of, like dressing up to go into an office, to sit in a room, to code, it's just so fucking weird to me. And so, like for me, it starts with like the attire, like I'm not saying like, you know, go nuts on your attire, but like. You know, get... Like, let, let loose a bit, right?

DENISE:
Yeah. Exactly.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

DENISE:
Yeah. Like, I, I think it would be really funny, though, if a tech company ever had like a formal Friday. Like the opposite... Everyone comes in business casual for the day. Everyone plays ping-pong... You’re on beanbags while wearing, like a jacket.

ADRIANA:
That would be kind of funny. It’s like a little fuck you. It's so funny because it reminds me of, in, in, the, the waning years of my banking days. There's this one guy on our team. And at that point we had, like, moved to business casual. So it was like, not so strict and we had casual Fridays. Yay! And there's one guy who joined our team, and he was like, he was really young. He was in his early 20s, like right out of school kind of thing. And he would show up to, not to school, to work, like dressed up, like really nice suit. Really nice tie. Dressed better than than the manager. And and I mean, he was nice to look at too, like. And, but it was like, so funny of, like, you're dressed better than the boss. And he was like, just like, up his game. But it was so funny because, like, he he was like dressing up to code.

DENISE:
Well, maybe he was dressing for the job that he wanted, not the job he had.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, I think so. Yeah, he was, he was yeah. He pretty much adhered to, to that dress code the entire time that I there.

DENISE:
Oh wow. That's impressive.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah, very impressive for me. I've gotten, like, more and more casual as, like a rebellion to my earlier years. Like, I remember, in my bank job, like, we didn't have casual Fridays at the time that I was pregnant, with my daughter. And, like, my feet swelled in the summer, from being pregnant, from it being hot. And I'm like, I don't give a fuck what anybody says. I'm going to wear flip flops to the office because, like, I couldn't. It was just like, it was horrible. My feet got really swollen and I'm like. Ain't nobody gonna bug a pregnant woman about what she's wearing. I'm going to bite your fucking head off if you say anything. No one said anything, but. Yeah.

DENISE:
Yeah, well, I remember like. Well, I'm so glad that tech is, you know, there basically is no dress code anywhere these days at, you know, tech companies. But my first job. So I didn't always work in tech. I, studied economics for my undergraduate degree, and I interned at a financial services company before, during university. And all the women in the office wear heels. So I turned up on the first day in flats, and I was like, oh shit, I'm underdressed. Every day for the rest of the summer, I would bring my heels in my bag and switch, change, right before I went into the building. But I'm just like, wow, that feels like a lifetime ago. I can't even imagine. I barely I will barely put on heels for like a wedding these days.

ADRIANA:
I know. Yeah, I, I did the bring the shoes to. I actually had a shoe drawer. At work. So I like, walk in to the office in running shoes. And then I open the shoe drawer. What tickles my fancy today?

DENISE:
Oh, smart, that's so smart.

ADRIANA:
Back back in the days of offices. Which meant that when I had to leave, that, like, when I left that job, I was, like, carrying so much crap out of the office, I'm like, never again.

DENISE:
Yeah, you’re basically moving furniture out at that point. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. Oh my God. Yeah. I know we've got just a little bit of time left, but, I did want to dip into a little bit, like, how how did you get into, going from, like, software engineering to management, is that something that, like, was that a career goal that one of the some people I talked to was like, yes, that's what I want to do.

ADRIANA:
Other people's like, I just sort of fell into it and decided I actually liked it. How, what was your journey into management?

DENISE:
I think I've been interested in management for a long time. Since. Well, in my first few years in industry, I was just kind of, like, just survive. Just, like, try not to get fired as an engineer. Don't even think about what's next. But, after I was working for a couple of years, I started to get a lot of feedback. And I think this is something that just very commonly happens. The women started getting a lot of feedback around the lines of, oh, you have such great soft skills. Like, you're doing such a great job of like mentoring your peers, reaching out to people like, have you considered becoming a manager? And I just like, kept getting that message over and over again. So I interviewed for a couple times and I was working at Pivotal. But the interviews never worked out. And so I shelved the idea for a little while, joined GitHub.

I joined GitHub as a senior IC, so that was also the first time that I'd been able to join a company straight as a senior IC, and so I was very excited about that. And I was like, nice to get recognized, you know, like right, right out the gate, not having to like, earn, work my way back up to that and fight for that again. And then literally three months into that job, my manager, yeah, my manager left. There was I joined at a time of, like, extreme internal turbulence, and there were just a lot of reorganize. So my manager got reordered to another team and I was offered it was like, oh, do you want to be the manager? And I was like, oh, oh, well, this is happening a lot earlier than. I thought I would. That I kind of thought I did some, some thinking at that point around like, I just got here. I'm not I don't quite have org credibility as a senior, I see, and I have a bit of insecurity around my ability to contribute at a senior level. So I think I'm going to stay a senior IC for a little while longer, learn the org, build some relationships, figure out who are like the who's who within, you know, within this place.

And looking back, that was probably one of the best decisions that I made. Because a year later, the opportunity to become a manager came up again. I happened to then report to probably my favorite, like, manager of managers that I will ever... No offence to my current boss, but, like, what a probably my favorite manager of managers that I've ever worked with of my entire career. Neha Batra, happy to name drop because she's awesome. She's still at Microsoft, but, Neha was the director of a newly formed group called Communities at GitHub, and it was a really, really fun place to be it because we did all the open source stuff around getting people in open source communities engaged with, with each other, you know, engaging productively on the platform. So we worked on things like GitHub discussions, issue forums like I mentioned, where I learned a lot about YAML. I sort of like the new user onboarding experience, community and safety and trust at scale, on GitHub. So a lot of really interesting problems or a lot of really fun problems to work on. But the the year that I spent as a manager at GitHub I learned so much because of where I was in the org chart, because I already had, a lot of credibility back from shipping a bunch of, you know, good pieces of work as a senior IC.

So, yeah, I guess, like my very long winded answer to your question is, I've always been interested in the manager path, but I was unsure about when would be the right time to sort of pull the trigger, because I do think that, again, because women are socialized to the care take. Right. And to like, want to look out for each other and help each other.

I do think that women disproportionately get the feedback that they should be in management because of we have good soft skills, but I think jumping off the IC track too early before you've developed that credibility can really be an impediment long term. Because if you are, when you become a manager, first of all, you have no time to code anymore.

You like whatever, whatever amount of technical knowledge you have that is locked. My best has frozen. Like whatever you have in the bank that that's all you're working on for the for. You can like increase your knowledge a little bit here and there, but realistically, like the whole job is interruption based and it's relationship building.

ADRIANA:
So true, so true.

DENISE:
Yeah. So I really like recommend staying on the senior IC trajectory for at least a couple of years, like total career wise, like I've seen people become a manager after one year in industry. And I'm like, whoa... that's I hope that works out for you. Like, I, I hope that works out for people, but that would not work out for me. Like one year in industry, I was so clueless. I knew nothing about anything. At that point. I was like, how would you like one of the the the key things you have to be able to do as a manager is mentor people, right? Your reports come to you for advice in 1 to 1. So they're like, I'm working on this kind of problem, or I'm having this problem with another person on the team, right. And if you if you have like so little personal experience to draw on, you're going to find it really challenging to help them navigate those kinds of situations.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, it's so true. And also having like, you know, a base amount of like technical expertise in general as well to be able to like provide and not just sit there and be like, okay, you do you like. Have like enough of an opinion to like, okay. Yeah, I like the direction this is going or let's revisit.

DENISE:
And I think like something I'm still trying to get a better balance on is like, how much should I facilitate and how much I put my own opinion out there? Because as a leader, you have a lot of built in power just because you have the title manager, right? People think that's your decision. Like when it comes to decision making, you get more votes than everybody else. But I don't think that should be true. I think that should actually be more untrue than it is true. Like, I think if we were waiting the inputs of everyone on the team, it should be like one weight for everybody, half a weight for the manager when it comes to, like, technical decision making. But in practice, that's not how people see you, right? Like everyone... thanks to North American and like, military base school. Like we are taught authority and to respect titles.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. So it's so true. Yeah I, I like when I was, a manager, like there was definitely this sort of I had some, some direct reports who were like, very shy and it's like, well no, I need you to be, like more assertive, like in. And the other one is like letting go of, you know, wanting to control everything. Because, like, I remember when I was, you know, being in, early in my IC career, having managers who were micro managers. So I definitely... my mental note was like, I do not want to do this to my direct reports.

DENISE:
Yeah, exactly. But that's also another thing that I think, like having a few years of industry experience at different companies makes you a better manager because you have enough personal lessons like this, right? You have enough examples of what not to do.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. And I love what you were saying about like jumping companies. That doesn't... it gives you like, different breadth of experience. It’s just nice to, to see how things are done differently and yeah, it, it gives you perspective that you wouldn't have, like, even if you're in the same company for like 20 years and doing different types of work, it's still that company culture. You're not going to see that that much difference.

DENISE:
Yeah, exactly. One thing I have observed about people who jump companies, every couple of years versus people who have been at one company and they go to, you know, like HashiCorp, or they go to GitHub. You know, this is like only their second job because they spent ten years or 15 years at the first company. The people who job hop more are generally more adaptable and they are more successful quickly... that they they rise through the ranks more successfully. Because once you've learned the organizational politics of like 2 or 3 different places, you're kind of like, okay, this is all, the only thing that that's true is change, right? People are just going to change their minds all the time, and I'm just going to roll with the punches. And the more that you just accept that, you know, the less you're going to be taken off guard when, when things like, you know, project priorities shift, roadmaps shift business priorities, whatever, you're just kind of like, yeah, this is just another this is just another day. It's just another normal week. It’s fine. I'm going to focus on what I can still have impact on, and I'm going to adjust my mental model over, like, what is the highest impacting I could do in a given week given this new information. So I think you're you're a lot easier, a lot quicker to adapt. But for the people who who have only been in one environment for most of their careers and they come to a new place, I think, my observation is that there is a bit more ramp up time.

It takes people longer to correct their mental models because they've been given this one type of feedback for a very long time, and they believe that that is a correct way to get feedback or reach out to people or collaborate or whatever it is. And so, like every new piece of information in their second environment, it's like, oh, this is like world changing for me. Like what else? Like and it sets off a whole bunch of like negative internal monologue. I think about like, what else is different here? Like what? Like my whole what can I not trust anymore of what else am I wrong about? And it's really not that deep. It's just like company. The way the companies work is so arbitrary and you just gotta learn to adapt.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Totally. Yeah. And and you start, like, you start seeing patterns after a while, you work at it and. Yeah. And then as you said, like the, the one constant is change. Like I remember I think my first like company reorg and I was like oh my God. And then you know after your third or fourth you're like.

DENISE:
Yeah, exactly. At GitHub we had... one of my favorite emojis was one called Live Laugh Reorg.

ADRIANA:
Oh my God.

DENISE:
It was amazing. The reorg themselves were not amazing experience but... Like at some point you got to develop like a very ironic sense of humor and just laugh about these things because like, what are you going to do? You can't spend all your time being upset about things that are not within your control.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, it's so true. I know. Otherwise you'll be like grumpy, jaded person.

DENISE:
Yeah, exactly. So just laugh about it. Be like businesses go to business and just move on.

ADRIANA:
How did you get into software?

DENISE:
A little bit by accident. I was in the UK from 2013 until 2014 because I was doing a graduate degree in social policy at the London School of Economics. Like really unrelated, I have no schooling in software or in computer science. But when I was a kid, I always, like, made my own websites. I taught myself, you know, I was one of those kids who you teach yourself, HTML and CSS that you can make, like a cool MySpace or like a cool profile or whatever. So I knew a little bit about that. And I because of that, I in, in like middle school and high school, I was always like the webmaster for my school clubs and was always like using Apache File server to FTP or whatever, like. Yeah, I was like, you know, this kid stuff. But I never really pursued it because I got really heads down into like the study of, policy and like law and all of that. When I was in high school and university, like, studied economics, university. So I finished my graduate degree, and in 2014, the UK's immigration policy was that if you have a student visa, you finish your degree at the end. You have like four months. You're allowed to be in the country for four months trying to find a job, but if not, goodbye. So I was at the I was in my four month period, just submitted my thesis and I was like, dang, what do I do? Like what do I do now? I try to apply for these like policy analyst jobs really hard.

There's like no. Positions open and they definitely don't want to sponsor me a visa to stay here. So one day I just saw an ad on Facebook to go do a coding bootcamp. This is like 2014, so coding bootcamps were not as big as they are today. They were not a super tried and true path into industry. And at that point, I wasn't really sure that I wanted to be a software developer, but I was like, well, let me try and let me try and do this. Like I've always been kind of good at tinkering with computers. Like this might be a good skill set to have in the back pocket. If I decide I want to go work at like a think tank or like a policy research or something like that. So I did the course, met a bunch of people, actually got really excited by the process of the thing that I think, like, you know, earlier we talked about app development vs ops, like the thing that I still find amazing about software engineering and like, I think app development specifically is that you can take an idea from nothing to something that works using just a laptop. You don't need, like, anything other than your brain. And so I still find like that process is really cool. Yeah, like this coding thing might be there might be there might be some legs to this. Like maybe this is more than just like a back pocket skill. Maybe I should look into this as a career path. And that's how I landed my I landed my first, junior software engineering position off the back of that bootcamp with, like, two days left on the end of my visa. It was very stressful.

ADRIANA:
Just in time.

DENISE:
I’d just about made it. I still had to fly home to the US for a little bit so that the visa could get processed and reenter with the correct documentation. But yeah, like looking back on it, I think I would have been happy to be a policy analyst. But those jobs, like the upward mobility in those roles, is just not the same as in technology. I think the. Impact, the impact that we can have is far greater, for better or for worse. Right? Like we can do a lot of good. Yeah, we can also do a lot of harm with the like the skills that we have. But yeah, I feel like, I'm pretty happy with my choice. You know, looking back, ten, ten years later, I feel like my brain gets stimulated every single day. I get to work with some really cool people, interact with with a lot of cool people in the community. And, yeah, like, I definitely have this, like, sense of, I don't know, like, we're all doing something pretty cool together. Which I think is. True for a lot of industries like I talk to my friends who work in, I don't know, I feel bad for journalists, actually, like I said, friends who work in journalism and there's like, not really, that's the same sense of optimism that I see in tech. So I think we're very lucky to be where we are, and we're very lucky that now is a time that people are willing to put money into technology. You know, people want to invest in this for some reason. I don't know why. Somebody needs like a 20th web app in Rails, but people seem willing to pay for that.

ADRIANA:
So fair enough. Fair. Yeah. We we love our technology, that's for sure.

DENISE:
Exactly. One day we will realize, like, oh, all those apps that we wrote are just like sitting around, do we really need that? Much like, does every company need a bespoke web application? But that's that's something to worry about later.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. I feel like the archeologists of the future are going to look down on this time and go like, what the fuck were they thinking? To be a fly on the wall.

DENISE:
Yeah, exactly.

ADRIANA:
All right, We're we're coming up on time. But before we go, do you have any, like, hot takes or, words of wisdom for our audience?

DENISE:
Hot takes. Oh, wow. I should have thought about this more.

ADRIANA:
It could be a word of wisdom.

DENISE:
Since I've been thinking about it lately, I know, like, I don't know, I feel like during general economic uncertainty, people get worried about layoffs and people get worried about attrition and that sort of thing. So one thing I openly tell, like probably this is a bit irresponsible coming from someone who is a manager at a company, but I honestly tell people like the best, you got to advocate for your own career. You know, like, I have a book on my shelf over there that's literally called Work Won't Love You Back. And the truth is that, companies have to optimize for shareholder value. They don't optimize for the well-being of you or your family. So, in times of economic uncertainty, one of the best things you can do for yourself, even if you're happy at work right now, even if you feel stable, even if you feel like things are not going anywhere. The advice I always tell people is take an interview once every six months. Take a call from a recruiter. It doesn't have to go very far. You can end it after the introductory call. It doesn't matter, but get a sense of what's out there and always like, know your worth. I think that's especially true for, women and people of color. You know, we are historically underpaid. And also, if you are a man and you're listening to this, share your salary with your women and minority coworkers, you are allowed to do it. It's legally protected for you to do that. And the more information we have, the better we can look out for each other.

ADRIANA:
Awesome. Yeah, those are really great words of advice. Well, thank you so much, Denise, for geeking out with me today.

DENISE:
Thanks so much. This is a lot of fun.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, this was awesome. I'm glad we had a chance to do this. And y'all, don't forget to subscribe and be sure to check the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media. Until next time...

DENISE:
Peace out and geek out.

ADRIANA:
Geeking Out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Villela. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking Out is also produced by my daughter Hannah Maxwell, who incidentally design all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the socials by going to bento.me/geekingout.

The One Where We Geek Out on Managing Change with Angela Blake

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Adriana Villela, Hannah Maxwell, Angela Blake) — Tue, 20 May 2025 04:00:00 +0000

Key takeaways:

Non-tech concepts translate to a tech world
Change is change, and how you navigate it, whether it's in a tech world or in a non-tech world is the same
The importance of acknowledging peoples' feelings about change and address their concerns.
The importance of explaing why the change is happening in order for others to embrace change more easily
The importance of protecting your time, to maintain mental health

About our guest:

Angela Blake is passionate about helping people create happy cultures and selves. She believes that we all have unique perspectives that are both valuable and useful. The most fulfilling work she's done is to draw out those perspectives, use them to improve ways of working together, and help people make positive, lasting change. In other words, she's a coach. :)

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show notes:

Transcript:
ADRIANA:
Hey, fellow geeks. Welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery DevOps, observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And geeking out with me today is Angela Blake. Welcome, Angela.

ANGELA:
Hi. Hi. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

ADRIANA:
Thank you for joining. I'm super excited to have you on. And where are you calling from today?

ANGELA:
I'm calling from a very humid Toronto, downtown Canada. I said that in such an odd order, but downtown Toronto and that. I'm on the waterfront down here. Very busy. Very warm. I'm loving it.

ADRIANA:
Awesome. And the waterfront is honestly, like, one of my favorite spots in Toronto in the summer. Same name. Beat that.

ANGELA:
Yeah. Yeah, I live down here. I work down here. I'm a waterfront person.

ADRIANA:
Oh, that's so perfect. Yay! Hooray for sunny days. Cool. Well, we're going to get started with some, I will say, lightning round slash icebreaker questions.

ANGELA:
I'm ready.

ADRIANA:
Are you ready?

ANGELA:
I think I am, I think I am.

ADRIANA:
Okay, let's do this. First question. Are you a lefty or righty

ANGELA:
Oh, a righty. 100%. Always have been.

ADRIANA:
All right. Are you an iPhone or Android user?

ANGELA:
I have to say I'm an iPhone person. I have all of the, I would say Apple products, so to speak. I love the compatibility.

ADRIANA:
I'm with you on that. Yes, I too am a “All things Apple.”

ANGELA:
Yeah. Yeah I just I like that everything just connects with each other. I don't have to really do much as a consumer or a user. I know Android has, like some amazing abilities to, personalize and customize, etc., but I'm good with what I get from Apple.

ADRIANA:
I'm with you. It's funny because all people are like, you can't customize Apple. I'm like, yeah, I'm okay with that. I'm don’t want to spend my days doing that.

ANGELA:
Yeah, yeah, I can customize my background just enough for me. I'm. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
Good enugh. Good enough. I'm down. I'm down. Okay. Similar question. Do you prefer Mac, Linux, or Windows?

ANGELA:
Oh, I honestly might not go along with my last answer, but I like Windows. Okay. I think because I've professionally always used Windows. So I'm that's what I'm used to. Like, you know, the Office suite, the the just the the usability of it, I think is kind of what I grew up. You think, so to speak. So it's just the most natural version for me.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, I feel ya.

ANGELA:
I do. Yeah, I do. Sorry I cut you off a little bit there, but I do have a MacBook at home that my son uses because I'm just like, I’m not as proficient...

ADRIANA:
It takes some getting used to, I have to admit, because I, I grew up in Windows Land as well. Like, you know, when Windows95 came out, I'm like, “whoa”. It can’t get any better than this.

ANGELA:
You're taking me back in time.

ADRIANA:
I know, right? Yeah. I mean, I remember Windows 3.1, and I was like, you know, the first time I saw a mouse, my dad's like, do you want to see something cool as a kid? He's like, you want to see something cool? I can show you a mouse right here. And I'm like, oh, and then he shows it to me and it's like it's a pointer on a screen. I'm like, what the hell is this??

ANGELA:
Oh my gosh. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
Letdown!

ANGELA:
I remember being able to customize my pointer like, functionality. Like to have it like, do the drag. The, the effects and whatnot. And that was like just that was the ultimate. Or the little fire. Like, people were actually putting effort into what the cursor did. They might still be. But I, you know, I've moved on, I guess.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, I know what you mean. Like when this stuff was very novel. Like, I remember when I got my first, computer with sound, which I think it was like, I want to say it was like a laptop. My parents bought me to go to university, and this was like in 1997. It had sound and it was like, not, it was like a it had a sound card, but it was like, not the greatest sound.

ADRIANA:
And I'm like, I am going to make everything ding because I can.

ANGELA:
I can customize all these sounds. Yeah. Yeah. Once that one that came along. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
And then you get tired of it.

ANGELA:
Yeah, now I’ve got my phone [...] everything. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Now my phone's constantly on silent. I can't even even stand, like, sounds coming from my phone. I'm like, no, this is so distracting.

ANGELA:
All notifications.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Exactly.

ANGELA:
Exactly. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
All right, next question. Do you have a favorite programing language?

ANGELA:
Oh, golly. No, I am a non-tech person in a tech world. So the programing languages I will say are, literally a whole other language to me.

ADRIANA:
All right, fair enough, fair enough. And actually, I think that'll be a really cool topic to dig into in our conversation, because I think that's that's a really interesting, I think really interesting thing to talk about. Okay. Next question is, do you prefer to consume content through video or text?

ANGELA:
I you know what? It's a hard decision because I'm thinking video. It's coming across like, Reels. It's coming across YouTube. But text is so concise. I'm probably going to have to go with a video just for, like, the probably the amount of time I spend consuming video over, over text. Like, I do get emails, but like newsletters, etc. and I the ones that I do subscribe to, I enjoy. But yeah, I think video wins just for I don't know. Eyeball entertainment. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
Now do you prefer the short form videos or for the long form videos. Like what? What kind of [...]?

ANGELA:
I probably go to the shorter, the shorter form. So the shorter it is with, with some sort of value. Yeah. Like I'm not talking about cat videos and things like that. That's a whole other topic of conversation. But like if I'm, if I want to learn something and somebody creative like a short video, I do enjoy, the feature in, YouTube where they show you like the most commonly viewed section of videos so that you can just jump to the, to the part that you've, I guess they're looking for. I like I like that, like I want to save my time.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Yeah. I didn't know about that feature. Today I learned...

ADRIANA:
That's awesome. Oh. Very clever.

ANGELA:
Yeah. I don't know if it's a feature, but it's just like, you can see, like, at the [...]. I don't know if it's all videos. But yeah, you could see, like, it's like a bar and it shows you where the, most, I guess most common. Either it's either time stamps or it's the most common watching area.

ADRIANA:
Right. Right. Right.

ANGELA:
I said that so poorly, but you know what I mean?

ADRIANA:
Yeah. That's awesome. Okay. Final question. What is your superpower?

ANGELA:
Oh. Oh. My superpower. I guess it depends who you ask. But you're asking me. I'm thinking. I have to say something, and you really make me. This is a tough one. I'm going to go with. I have pretty organized brain, so I don't know for certain. So I've developed systems of thinking because I forget things. And I tend as a human, as we all do. I have a lot going on, whether it's work things or, you know, personal life things.

Going to concerts, planning, communications and my, you know, my job, etc.. Keeping track of all that, you know, it's not necessarily just all things that you can pop into your calendar. So I've over the years and I would say this isn't just something that I developed and it lived as it were originally iterated. I've, I've changed and shifted my, my systems over the years, but, I, I'm always kind of reorganizing my systems of organization.

ADRIANA:
That's awesome. That's awesome. So you're like, you're refining. Your system.

ANGELA:
Thank you. I love the way you put that. Yes.

ADRIANA:
I'm very, like, software oriented mindset. So I must say.

ANGELA:
I'm getting rid of the technical debt in my head.

ADRIANA:
There you go! Oh, yeah. I mean, it's it's like it's a thing. It's a trait of like, you know, personal growth. Personal development. As like, you learn better ways of doing things. You refine your system.

ANGELA:
Yeah. Yeah. And I love talking to other people about how they organize information. People have written books about it. Like, it, it's fascinating to to learn other systems and then I can use that to apply to my own, like, little personal systems.

ADRIANA:
That's very cool. It's funny because I think sometimes, like, we underestimate how hard it is to be organized because, like, I don't know about you, but like, you know, sometimes I'll come with like, come up with a categorization of certain things and I'm like, oh, but this thing can fall into here or here. I don't know what to do. And it causes me stress.

ANGELA:
Yeah. Yeah. Like, will I be able to find this later is basically the premise.

ADRIANA:
Yes.

ANGELA:
Of all organization. Like, am I going to know when I need to? Action this? Am I going to find it when I need it, etc.. Yeah. So...

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

ANGELA:
It can be stressful.

ADRIANA:
Exactly. Yeah. Especially like, I don't know if this happens to you, but for me, I'm like, I'm organizing something. I'm like, of course I'll find it. You know. I remember this. And then a week later I'm like, what was I thinking?

ANGELA:
Yeah. This is it's so obvious that it goes here. And yeah. And later on you have to return to like, a certain state of mind to figure out what. It's not that obvious. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
Like it made sense under these circumstances.

ANGELA:
But can I figure... I recently did that with, one of those pop sockets that you put on the back of a phone. AV: Oh, yeah...

ADRIANA:
I, I like having those. So my, it's not just leaning on my, my baby finger. My phone, I mean, so I like to have a pop socket and I got a new phone case and I wanted to put this popsocket on that.

ANGELA:
I pre-purchased somewhere and found it on sale somewhere. And I was like, oh, that's a cute one. I'll, I'll buy that and put it and I'll put it somewhere. I haven't found it yet.

ADRIANA:
Oh no.

ANGELA:
That made perfect sense at the time. I will find it probably in a year or so when I'm looking for something else. So, yeah.So just to say, even if it is my superpower, there's always opportunity to refine and become better at organization.

ADRIANA:
Oh yeah. Super down for that. Awesome, awesome. Well, you've survived the questions and, congrats. So now what I wanted to talk to you about because... you, you mentioned this earlier on that you are a non-technical person in a technical world. So how did that happen?

ANGELA:
It's, it was a surprise to me. I don't know why. So I've worked for the same company for almost 30 years now, and 25 of those years were spent in on the business side of the company. So it's a it's a large company. And there was a lot of opportunity over there to try new roles and, and do lots of different things. Like I had a very a varied, career, in on the business side and I and I didn't actually have any aspirations to move into the technology side. However, while I was on the business side, I started working with a technical team. So it was a team of folks who were building like dashboards, and queries, etc. to help the business understand, you know, data and information. So I was really translating that, from just raw data into, like digestible information that they could use to drive decisions. And while I was working with this team, I was learning about Agile, Scrum mastery, etc. it was my very first introduction to these roles and these methodologies and concepts. And prior to that, I had been doing a lot of project type work.

And there was a lot of things about the work that I was doing that I kind of questioned. I just thought, there's gotta be a better way. Like, why are we having all of these siloed conversations and why are we doing work over here, in it on its own. And then kind of throwing it over the fence, as it were, so to speak, for somebody else to do and then expecting just updates, status updates, etc..

So when I did learn about the existence of this thing that had existed for quite a long time before I ever learned about it, the idea of agility and the principles there and the values there, it just I was like, oh, so other people thought this too, and I have come up with ways of working that can help people solve some of these, and not necessarily problems, but challenges of just trying to work with, with other people and trying to work with larger groups, etc..

So I really dove into that and I started to call myself a Scrum Master. I never officially had the title of Scrum Master. But I started it was almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy, as it were. I would call myself a Scrum Master. I would talk about agility. I would help people on the business side understand the value of Agile values and principles for themselves.

And because Agile was born within technology, as I grew in my career, I just was naturally attracted to, like a coaching role. It was kind of like an evolution of of a Scrum Master role, one of the many possibilities. And, that role was in technology. So I thought, okay, I'm applying for this role as whole other side of this company that I work in, and, it's kind of scary because I'm used to business. I'm used to that language. Yeah, I'm used to how things work on this one side. I hate to say that it's a side, but, you know, this one line of business within this company, and technology is completely new to me. Like, I don't I don't, my. Like I said earlier, I don't know any languages in any tech languages or coding languages. I don't know anything about developing. But I do know these ways of working and how to help people deal with the day to day frustrations of trying to work, whether they're in business or whether they're in technology. So it was really this desire to help people solve the problems that they go through every day. Yeah. That that kind of drew me over to where agile was, was born, so to speak, like to that side of the business. So I came over to technology, but even then, and this is like a summary of 30 years, even when I came to technology, I was I was an agile coach.

I was working with technology teams, but I still was a non-tech person. So I'm even though I'm immersed within technology, I'm not coding, I'm not developing. But I am working now directly with developers every day. Sometimes working with, you know, the leadership, the managers and such like the, the middle management, the executives, etc. to help them understand, like the value of, of a finding new ways of working because people are maybe a little frustrated and, maintaining things like sustainable pace,

But also doing things like advocating for the team to say that this, this particular team that I'm coaching needs this. To get unstuck or whatever it is that they're looking for and helping them challenge the ways of working that existed that caused their frustrations. So just getting to know the teams, but it was more dealing with them as people than technology people.

Yeah. And due to, reorg, I, moved I've moved recently from an agile coaching role to, to, a strategy and operations role where it's a lot about communicating the changes that we're making and letting the people that use the products and tools that we build, letting them know about these upcoming changes and if it affects them and if there's any impact to them. Etcetera. So still have... I am within DevOps now. So I'm in the DevOps group, and working with them day-to-day and helping them communicate about all these amazing DevOps tools that we have and how it can benefit you and save you time and make life easier and better. But I still don't know how to code.

I see the people around me on the screens with all of the words on them. That looks like the matrix to me. I don't know, I don't know what any of that says. But I do know, you know, how to communicate the things that they need communicated. And I'm very slowly, I would say, learning the, the architecture and the, the, the engineering of, DevOps, as it were. Yeah. I mean, I'll never know it to the detail of, of a developer. However, I can know enough to understand how things connect and how to, help the people who are using our tools understand the impact to them.

ADRIANA:
That's awesome. And I you know, I think you you touched on something really interesting, which is like, yeah, you're you're not a technical person, but at the end of the day, like... we're all working with people. And I think the, the most challenging aspects in an organization, whether it's a technology organization and... or not. And let's face it, most organizations do have a a technology aspect. It's still going to be the people. It's always like the, the, the socio-technical aspects are probably the most challenging ones when it comes to like, really getting, really herding folks in the in the right direction, especially of, of like major change, like large business transformations, that sort of thing.

ANGELA:
Yeah. Yeah. Because I mean, whenever there is a change, our reaction to it is as a human. Yeah. It's not I'm not reacting to it as a developer or somebody in strategy or a business person. I'm I'm reacting to it as a human and how it affects me. Yes. My day to day or how I'm I might be afraid of how it'll affect me in my day to day, or concerned or, you know, I want to know more.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

ANGELA:
How it will affect me. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. So, you know, when you're when you're dealing with folks like this, especially like in a coaching role, how do you, how do you navigate that... the fear that folks have around, you know, trying something different, especially because things are always changing. So you almost have to, like, brace yourself for the change. But it's hard for some people.

ANGELA:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I 100% agree with the fact that it can be hard for folks. I you're bringing me back a little bit to like, the 90s. I was thinking about when I first started my career, and I was, working on different projects, and somebody at the time said, you know, change is constant. It's the only, you know, there's like a common phrase.

It's like the only thing that doesn't change is change. Like it's always it's always coming at you. Yeah. And we need to be prepared because change isn't going away. And, it's just going to become faster and more frequent in the future. And this was the 90s. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. We're. Yeah. Now we're in the 2020s and it's.

We weren't wrong. I guess that's what I'm saying. Like there's there's constant change going on around us. But that doesn't mean that it's easier for people to adapt because there's different types of change. And we're all impacted differently, by any given change. So, a change that affects a, you might emotionally hit you differently than me, right? Like so. And it depends entirely on what the change is, how it affects us, how much we know up front when we hear about it. So. And your question was about like how as a coach, I would, you know, help somebody with that or, you know, talk to somebody about it or help them think about changing. And, and I would put the caveat that every coach is different.

So, another coach will do things differently than I will. [...] But in my, in my case, I'm more, like, I do like to challenge people to push themselves out of their comfort zone a bit, because where you learn is in where you're uncomfortable and your, your zone of discomfort is where you're you're learning and growing. But there's also, you know, an acknowledgment of that fear or an acknowledgment of the emotions that go along with the change.

And sometimes people need an opportunity to be heard, when it comes to that, whatever, whatever feelings they have, some I've seen changes happen and I've, you know, been 30 years with the same company. I've seen many changes happen. Big ones, little ones, all, all different. Everybody reacts a little bit differently and, has different levels of comfort with ambiguity, I would say.

Yeah. Like my myself, I'm pretty comfortable with ambiguity. I'm like, okay, well, I'll find out more later. But some people want all the details right now. As soon as I know about a change, I need to know.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

ANGELA:
How it's going to affect me. I need to be able to plan for my future. And, I mean, like, it could be a simple, straightforward change, like, we're going... and this is going to date me, and we're going from Lotus 1-2-3 to Excel. Like we're going to.

ADRIANA:
I remember Lotus 1-2-3.

ANGELA:
I was so good at it. I, I did all my keyboard shortcuts and everything. And then I had to figure out Excel and I thought, oh my gosh, I'm never going to figure this out. I was I was highly impacted. And I would even dare say emotional about it...

ADRIANA:
Well, yes...

ANGELA:
For some time, because I was frustrated, even when I was, even... the change had happened. I use Excel now. And I'm still... I'm frustrated because I'm not as fast as I once was. My productivity is down, and I... you know, have to recreate things...

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

ANGELA:
In my case. Right. So, I mean, that's an oldie but a goodie example. But change is all around us and, and as a coach, I'm trying to help people understand that they have the capacity to make changes that will potentially make their life better.

ANGELA:
And I mean their work life. If I'm life coaching them, maybe their, their personal life, but, the changes that they're making are experiments that could potentially alleviate some of their frustrations. And if they have control over those experiments or the changes that they make, like, and it could be some small little thing like, let's have, 15 minute stand up every other day and, or maybe they're already having a 15 minute stand up every other day and they're like, it's, you know, we're not getting what we need out of it. Okay, well, let's talk about what you need. And do we need to change the cadence. Do you want to change how you run the conversation? Do we want to revisit the purpose? As just examples.

So I think. When people can understand the benefit of a change, when they can understand that their, their feelings about it are acknowledged, I think it makes it a lot more, feasible, a lot, a lot more likely for people to take on a change or to create a change. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, that makes so much sense. And it's, you know, it makes me think back to all the all the times that, you know, I've, I've experienced change or been in an organization that that did a large change. And like, I remember like being in an organization where we switched from Google Mail to Outlook and it was like, it was so frustrating. Right. And, and because you're, you know, it's like the Lotus 1-2-3 example to Excel, you're used to working a certain way. And then now all of a sudden, like your workflow changes, but you know, being explained... like hearing, hearing from folks like, okay, this is the reason for the change. And it's like, well, it does make logical sense. You know, like...

I might have my feelings around what tool I prefer, but like in terms of standardization within an organization, it makes a lot of sense. So you almost like, I don't know, logic kind of wins out on that. But I guess the other thing too, though, is like logic doesn't always win out on that, because as I said, there's the emotional aspect. And I love what you said about acknowledging people's feelings, because I think the, I think what frustrates, I think what we crave more than anything as humans is to to feel like we're part of something and to feel acknowledged. Right?

ANGELA:
Yeah. And even maybe to feel like we have a little bit of control or impact on what's happening. We... many years ago, we were moving an office from downtown to, uptown so that we could diversify our footprint. So we didn't have all of our offices downtown, which, logic makes sense. But highly emotional process for people because it affects me on a personal level. Now I have to go instead of from my home to this downtown location, I have to go to an uptown location. So which which for some people. Great. I live uptown. I'm closer to work. But for some people it was much more, travel time, or somewhat more travel time. So. And it was a big ambiguous thing.Where am I going to sit? What's it going to be like there? Yeah, it's like my my morning routine. Where am I going to get my coffee? Yes. So I was part of a project that was helping some of these folks move. And it was just about... we had roundtables where they could talk about their feelings and ask their questions.

So we get which we, you know, because emotions are data. So when they would tell us that they're scared of what's going on or they're frustrated or that it's going, they're going to be farther away and they're they're mad, that's that's data that we can use to help us address some of their concerns. You're afraid of the ambiguity.

Okay, well, here's a sample of what the chairs are going to be like. And this is the material we're using on them. And here's a floor plan. This is where you're going to sit. We did like little videos, like a little tour video of here's how you get to the local Tim Hortons or Starbucks or whatever it was.

So your morning routine, you can see what it's going to be like, just trying to. And these were all addressing the concerns. Yeah. They were, they were, they were raising but the, I think more valuable was the opportunity that they had to just say what they wanted to say. Be heard. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
That's so great. And, I mean, it's, it's, and it shows that like, there's thoughtfulness on your part because I think that's what, that's what people really hate is like, to be told. It's like, you know, I was involved in a few, like, transformation projects, and early in my career, like, you know, I was like, so had this mentality of, like, I'm always right. And therefore, like, what everyone else is doing is crap. And so, you know, come in and say, “What you're doing is crap.” And you're basically saying, “You have an ugly baby.” Nobody wants to be told they have an ugly baby.

ANGELA:
No. That’s right. That’s right.

ADRIANA:
So yeah... like, being gentle about it.

ANGELA:
Yeah. And I mean, there's there's always going to be changes that are thrust upon us, so to speak, like that we don't have any say in and we don't have any, leverage or impact on like we do. It's just outside of our sphere of influence. But there's always choices that we can make as far as how we let it impact us, how we react to it.

And as the people who are creating change and thrusting it upon others, so to speak, we have the opportunity to communicate with people in a different way, like to give them an avenue to share their thoughts or to ask questions, or to have maybe a little control somewhere. Okay. It's making me think of it. When my son was just little and I would give him choices like, what do you want to have for dinner? But I wasn't asking a three year old, what do you want to have for dinner? Yeah, I was asking, do you want to have chicken nuggets or do you want to have, mashed potatoes? I'm just making something up there. Can’t think of something I was feeding him when he was three. But. So I just give him like, it wasn't the illusion of a choice. He did have a choice.

But it was a limited. I'm not gonna give you the options of everything. I'll give you the options of the things I'm willing to make tonight. And, that's it.

ADRIANA:
So it’s like guardrails, basically.

ANGELA:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it gives that feeling of, oh, I have a little bit of control here.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's so awesome. And you know, I want to go back to something that you mentioned as an Agile Coach where, the idea of like, getting the feedback from the folks that you were coaching, even on, on the frequency of, like, the stand ups and making tweaks to, to the Agile process because I think, like for me personally, like, I love the idea of Agile, I like the agility of agile, but I've always had a bit of a beef with the fact that agile. It's so like encrusted in ceremony that it's almost to the point where it's stifling. And I think, it, it, I think originally it was supposed to be meant as guidelines, and then it just became like, very stringent. And Scrum is very, very, you know, like strict with the ceremonies. But hearing what you were saying, which is like, I think embracing the agility, the lowercase “agile” of Agile.

ANGELA:
Absolutely. Yeah. I love, I love what you said encrusted with what does feel that way. And I absolutely agree with you, how agile methodologies can can sometimes in some scenarios are, and I would say maybe a lot of [...] are used as, like rulebooks, and not as, here's a tool that you can use to help you. Somebody came up with some ideas that make them more agile. Instead of that, they say, thou shalt do this thing. Now thou shalt Scrum, Kanban, or whatever it is. And so it instantly, turns people off and they don't even learn about the, say, the values or the principles of agile, which are where it's like the really good stuff. I'm just trying to like, figure out ways to work at a sustainable pace. Oh, how many people have I talked to that, you know, are frustrated with taking on too many projects, or too much work? It's a lot, so, if I, if I'm, if I get to the values and the principles of Agile like that, to your point of the small agile, like, just being agile, like, Kanban and Scrum...

They don't, they don't matter. They're just systems that should be helping us, and not be used as, I guess a ruler. Where... I don't know, a rule book. Because they're, they're encrusted in ways.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. And then. And then it defeats the whole purpose of what you're trying to accomplish.

ANGELA:
Yeah. Because then people don't feel like they have a space to experiment and try new things and have conversations with each other about, you know, hey, what should we try next? Because they're busy. Aren't you meeting all of these little tick boxes of what they're considering to be Agile, or Scrum or Kanban?

ADRIANA:
Yeah, totally, totally. Now, now switching over now that you're on the other, I don't want to call it the other side, but now that you have moved to the DevOps world, because, I mean, they're often agile, like I see them as like, they're so intertwined, because you can't... have the agility that you want with Agile without DevOps, because you got, you need to have those fast feedback loops from DevOps. So how how do you that for you going like from moving from like the Agile world to the DevOps world? How did that how did that translate for you? What were some of the similarities, some of the differences?

ANGELA:
I think I better understand now, like CI,/CD, but like the benefits of CI/CD, continuous integration, continuous development, and, and better understand just like the value of things like automation tools, even like going to the degree of talking about like AI and large learning, models. I honestly, as a, as a coach, coming from the business side, as a, as a scrum master on the business side, I probably didn't understand the benefit of those things as well as I could have. I mean, I could talk to somebody and say, yeah, have you heard of, I don't know, test driven design, and and speak to it. And I could talk to it but didn't really truly understand it. I will openly admit, until you, you know, seeing it live, seeing it working within DevOps.

Yeah. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
And that's the magic too, I think for me, like, you know, it's as you said, you like, read about it, hear about it, whatever. And then you see it and you're like, what?

ANGELA:
Yeah, yeah. The cool thing with, I would say development, agile, etc., like the experience is so much. I don't want to say just better, but I'm, that's the word that's coming to mind. It's, it's better than the theory. Yeah. So reading it is cool. Like you're getting an understanding of the concept but like seeing it and you're like, oh, this is where it could go. What? That's all fantastic. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
Mindblowing.

ANGELA:
Different. Yeah. Yeah, it's really, eye-opening.

ADRIANA:
And until, like, when you're, you know, looking at DevOps in, in a large organization where, where you're at, like, we see some of the challenges that are, that are occurring with teams because, I mean, large organizations means that you are contending with tons of teams. And it's so tempting for like, everyone to do their own thing, right?

ANGELA:
Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. And and we do see like, I mean, because we're a large organization, we do see folks that are, they're not yet using DevOps. So we're still in the process of adopting, so we're really trying to help people understand the benefit and help them understand, like, hey, come on over. The water’s fine. It's great over here. You're gonna like it. I, we promise you. I mean, it it does come with challenges because, you know, you're centralizing things. It's, it's more, it's standardized in some ways because you're using, like, this specific tool. But I'd like to say, like, I feel like and I'm saying this as a non-tech person in the tech world, of course.

That there's lots of options. Like, it's not like we just have one tool that does this specific thing. We have multiple. Yeah. You do have options within DevOps. So I find it interesting to think about the folks who have not yet adopted DevOps. And the challenge is that they're going through and what makes them feel as though... and it goes back to the humanity.

Emotions right of why? Why aren’t they using DevOps yet? Is it because they feel that.. Are they afraid of it? Are they, concerned about the amount of time it would take them to, to reimagine their, the, the way that they work so that they're using it? Because it's, I would argue, that it's worth the effort. Once you. Yeah, once you, once you're using it, you're spending so much less time on things that you're spending time on now. Yeah, I think they're automated, etc.. And there's somebody else taking care of the background of things. You can just focus on, you know, building features and updating them, etc..

ADRIANA:
Exactly. Sit back, relax, enjoy the show. We'll take. care of you.

ANGELA:
Yeah, I'll take care of all the background stuff.

ADRIANA:
That's awesome. Well, I could stay on this topic forever, but I do want to talk about one other thing. So, I know one of the things that you mentioned that you wanted to talk about was the idea of protecting your energy, which I think.

ANGELA:
Oh, yeah, yeah.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. It sounds awesome. And if you could elaborate on that a little bit.

ANGELA:
Yeah. So, you know, and this is again, back to just being a human being. I find I've been having conversations lately with, with just various people and, and just naturally these conversations have been coming up about.... saying no, quitting things, protecting the time and energy that we have to spend on the things that are priorities for ourselves. And it was I would also say that it was a theme of, the folks that I coached, when I was as a life coach as well, people have challenges with setting boundaries and maybe don't feel that they can. Maybe feel the pressure to always say yes or to always be available, which connects, I think, with the idea of, you know, working at a sustainable pace, which is a, you know, an Agile idea.

I, I think it's so important for us to, be sure to protect the energy that we have and to not be afraid to advocate for ourselves when we don't want to do a thing. Like there's nothing wrong with saying no to, like, taking on another project or to to, I don't know, whatever it is that you want... need to say no to. In in one example of somebody that I coached, it was, you know, they felt the pressure to stay connected like via their, their phone or their laptop all evening. And it was like, maybe you should set a boundary, try it out.

And just be, share that with the folks that... that, would usually reach out to you and just share, like, after 5 p.m.. I'm. I'm not fine. I'm hanging out with my family or my dog or myself because I need to recharge. There is a there is an analogy that... coaches love analogies. So I've got all these little, little images, but it's the idea of you are an axe, and if you don't stop chopping the wood long enough to sharpen your axe every now and then, which is you, your energy, like just your brain, it's going to get dull and it's going to get harder to chop the wood, and it's going to get to the point where your axes just going to fall apart, because you never stop to maintain it. So you do need to have you need you need to stop doing things. You need to say no to things so that you can protect the energy that you have and rebuild it back up sharp, sharpened your ax,e whether that's your brain or your your energy or, you know, just your mental state. You know, you need that time for yourself because you are a human being.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Yeah. That's so great. I love that. And I think that's such a great analogy. And it's I mean, it's so hard to say no. And especially like, also like I do feel like the more seen you are in your career, the more people will ask you to do stuff. And then you're like, oh my God, they appreciate the work that I'm doing. But then that means that you're getting like all these ridiculous, not ridiculous, but like, all sorts of requests, and it's like, oh my God, I don't want to let this person down, but you end up letting you down if you take on too much, right?

ANGELA:
Yeah. And you could end up letting them down just in the future. Like, it, it’s just, you know, you say some, say yes to something that you really just don't have time for. Yeah. And and you can just be letting them down further along. Yeah. And there's also nothing wrong with., “not right now.” Like, instead of, “no”, if it's something that you really want to do, like it's a really cool idea or, or opportunity. You can say, you know, I'm really busy right now, but can we touch base on this next week or next month or whatever works for your scenario? Because I think we forget about that option totally. You know, just sharing, like, I'm really busy right now, but I do want to do this. Can we touch base on it later? Yeah.

ADRIANA:
I'm you know you have to just like, remind people

ANGELA:
Yeah. You just you're just merely advocating for yourself in some small way. And it opens the conversation.

ADRIANA:
Exactly.

ANGELA:
It's that simple. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
Awesome. Well, I we are coming up on time, so, before we part ways, I was wondering if you had any words of wisdom or hot takes that you would like to share with folks?

ANGELA:
I think, not necessarily a hot take, but just like the advice that I give just about anybody these days is to trust in your gut. Trust in yourself. Like, listen to that inner voice that you have going on. And, and, you know, try the thing. Like if you're if your inner voice is telling you, you're maybe taking on too much, maybe say no to some stuff, or if it wants to try karaoke, go check it out. Like, you know, just trust, trust what's going on inside of you and, feed that.

ADRIANA:
That's awesome. I love that so much. Well, thank you so much, Angela, for geeking out with me today.

ANGELA:
It was a pleasure.

ADRIANA:
It was so much fun. And y'all, don't forget to subscribe and be sure to check out the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media. Until next time.

ANGELA:
Peace out and geek out.!

ADRIANA:
Geeking out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Villela. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking Out is also produced by my daughter Hannah Maxwell, who, incidentally, designed all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the socials by going to bento.me/geekingout.

Geeking Out Live: Observe All The Things

Tue, 6 May 2025 04:00:00 +0000

About Tim Banks:

Tim’s tech career spans over 25 years through various sectors. Tim’s initial journey into tech started in avionics in the US Marine Corps and then into various government contracting roles. After moving to the private sector, Tim worked both in large corporate environments and in small startups, honing his skills in systems administration, automation, architecture, and operations for large cloud-based datastores.

Today, Tim leverages his years in operations, DevOps, and Site Reliability Engineering to advise and consult with the open source and cloud computing communities in his current role. Tim is also a competitive Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioner. He is the 2-time American National and is the 5-time Pan American Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu champion in his division.

Find our guest on:

About Marino Wijay:

Marino Wijay is a Canadian, Traveller, International Speaker, Open Source Advocate for Service Mesh, CNI, Kubernetes, and Networking. He is an Ambassador @ Civo Cloud, and Lead Organizer for KubeHuddle Toronto. He is passionate about technology and modern distributed systems. He will always fall back to the patterns of Networking and the ways of the OSI. Community building is his driving force; A modern Jedi Academy.

Find Marino on:

Bluesky

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
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Show notes:

Adriana & Marino's Observability Day EU 2025 talk

The One Where We Geek Out on Outreachy with Eromosele Akhigbe

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Adriana Villela, Hannah Maxwell, Eromosele Akhigbe) — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 04:00:00 +0000

About our guest:

Eromosele David Akhigbe is a Developer Advocate at StepSecurity, where he combines technical expertise with a passion for making technology more accessible and understandable. He’s also an active contributor to the OpenTelemetry community. A proud first-class graduate of Mechanical Engineering from Landmark University and a Decagon-trained software engineer, Eromosele is a strong advocate for open-source software and is committed to projects that democratize access to tech.

He believes deeply in Africa’s potential to shape the future of technology and innovation. Outside of work, you’ll often find him playing lead guitar or engaging with communities that share his mission to uplift the African tech ecosystem.

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Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show notes:

Transcript:
ADRIANA:
Hey, fellow geeks. Welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela. Coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And geeking out with me today, I have Eromosele Akhigbe. Welcome, Eromosele!

EROMOSELE:
Thank you Adriana for this opportunity. It's so nice to be here.

ADRIANA:
And I'm so happy to have you on.

EROMOSELE:
Thank you so much, Adriana.

ADRIANA:
Okay. So, where are you calling from today?

EROMOSELE:
Yeah, I'm calling from Lagos, Nigeria. So Nigeria, for some of you that don't know, is in Africa, is located at the western part of Africa. So yeah, that's what I'm calling from.

ADRIANA:
That's so cool. That's awesome. It's interesting. I've had, two people from Morocco on my podcast, but when I had them, they weren't in Morocco. So you are my first, like, person from Africa who's living in Africa, on the podcast. This is super exciting. Okay, so, I have so much to get into. But before we do that, we are going to start with the icebreaker questions. Are you ready? Okay. First question. Are you left handed or right handed?

EROMOSELE:
Right. Right handed.

ADRIANA:
Next question. Do you prefer iPhone or Android?

EROMOSELE:
iPhone any

ADRIANA:
Okay. Next question. Do you prefer Mac, Linux, or Windows?

EROMOSELE:
Mac. I'm currently using a Mac. No to Windows. I do not like Windows. Yeah. I'm a Mac user.

ADRIANA:
Did you. Okay, here's a question for you. Did you ever use Windows before? Because it's funny, I've talked to some people who are like, I've never even used Windows. I'm a Mac user through and through.

EROMOSELE:
No, I used to use like, Windows, when I started my tech career. And, it was the experience wasn't the best.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, I, I also for, for listeners of the podcast, they probably know... they've heard me talk about this many times, but also like I started my life with Windows, my tech life. Okay. Next question. Do you have a favorite programing language?

EROMOSELE:
Yes, I do, and it's Golang. And I also have a not so favorite programing language, although, you did not ask, which is, Java I'm not a fan of Java. I'm not I'm not a crazy fan of Java because of my experience. So my, my, my experience with Java was, the first programing language because, I, I was always, intrigued by programing since I was in secondary school. So I was intrigued, but I didn't have the, you know, the resource to learn at that time. So I was still my dad. And then one time he brought one IT guy from his company, and the guy came. And I think that after learning how to use the terminal, you know, and I learned how to change password using admin, you know, I learned about admin stuff. I was a very curious kid. So, you know, and I told the guy that I can hack your laptop, and the guy didn't believe because he was an IT professional. And I'm a young kid.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah.

EROMOSELE:
And he was like, I dare you to. And I did it. And he was shocked. I told him that okay, I'm really interested in programing. I would like to learn. And I think I believe strongly that it's because of what I did. Because I embarrassed him. He decided that the best language is for me to start with was Java. He gave me I would say the worst tutorials I've ever, you know watched and I you know trying it. I thought I was just a dumb person. I couldn't just like because how willing just to type hello world public main static. It sounded so scary and crazy to me. So, you know, I just decided that maybe programing wasn't my thing. When. When I had my friends talk about JavaScript, I was like, wait. If Java is this hard, this script of Java. So I just ran away from programing, you know,

ADRIANA:
Oh, wow. So that turned you off initially?

EROMOSELE:
Yeah, yeah. For like, four years.

ADRIANA:
Can you imagine if you’d been like completely put off by it. Like how? Like how different your life would have been? How did you end up learning Go?

EROMOSELE:
Yeah. So très interesting story. Yeah, so in 2022 I was in my because in my I was in uni... I was in uni and we're having like some kind of internship. By the way, I studied mechanical engineering. So I didn't study software engineering at all because I ran away from code. I was scared of code.

ADRIANA:
So yeah, dude. I like ran away from code in university too. I was like, I don't want to do this for a living. And then like in university, they fricking teach you how to code. And you're like, dammit!

EROMOSELE:
Yeah.

ADRIANA:
My degree is in industrial engineering. So I don't I don't have a computer science or computer engineering degree either. So there you go anyway. Carry on.

EROMOSELE:
So, we had an internship, and during that time I had a really good friend of mine shout out to him, by the way, his name is Isaac. And, you know, he just encouraged me that, okay. You don't want to program. Why not try DevOps, you know, and. Okay. DevOps. You know that. Okay. Sounds cool. Let me try it. Let me give it a try. And during that time I started learning DevOps. But the, the school I went to guess what decided teaching us JavaScript first. And I was like what. I'm back to programing again And I was so scared at first. But then I now realize that, wait a second, it's not that deep, you know? It's actually easy. It's not hard, you know, to code. And I'll say, like my passion for coding, you know, started, you know, dreaming again. But then I just because I went for my final year and I couldn't balance programing and final year projects, you know, things like that. So I had to put a pause. Yeah. And then December 2023, I decided to pick it up again, you know, instead of learning DevOps. And good was really nice course from... I can’t pronounce his name, but Abhishek, something like that. He's a really good guy, Udemy, then the life, my choice. My turning point was Outreachy. I don't know if you heard about Outreachy Adriana.

ADRIANA:
I have, I have, but for folks who aren't familiar with it, tell tell. Them tell our audience about Outreachy, yeah.

EROMOSELE:
Yeah, definitely. So Outreachy basically, it's like an initiative to encourage people that are in underrepresented communities, you know, to get into open source and open science. So it's not just for tech guys, also for, you know, science people. Like we have some projects about biomes, you know, microbiomes and things around that. So, I, you know, you know, show back story. When I went to apply for Outreachy, I was like, bro, nobody's ever going to pick me. But the beautiful thing about Outreachy is that is not based on experience like, you don't have to have a nice resume or like 20 years of experience or 3 years of, you know, what can experience. In fact, it's an internship and it's really, really nice. And kudos to the people that are, you know, pushing it. I applied for it, you know. I applied for it and I got it. I got into the first phase and that's how I got connected to the OpenTelemetry community. Yay!

ADRIANA:
Outreachy is not like, I know there's a lot of Outreachy people involved with the CNCF, but Outreachy is not necessarily a program of the CNCF. It's one that the CNCF is involved with. Is that correct?

EROMOSELE:
Yeah. So, so how Outreachy works is that Outreachy you know, accepts. So if you CNCF as a, as a organization can decide to sponsor an intern to work in an open source project. So that is how it works. Usually we have, OpenTelemetry you know, so you just have a little task that, you know, so on that is new, can come in and do you know, and gain experience with the community. So it's really, really nice. I think you also have, mentorship, something like that. So it's a similar kind of, you know, structure. So, that's how I got to meet Juraci and Yuri. Really awesome. There were awesome, awesome mentors. And I had to start learning Go because to contribute. Yeah. So I was I was forced to learn Go because to contribute OpenTelemetry or to OpenTelemetry is written in Go. Most parts of it, except the SDKs, is written in Go. So I have start learning Go from scratch, to learn about OpenTelemetry. But I read so many. I don't know if you can remember, but I read so many of your blogs at that time to like ramp up on OpenTelemetry. Even Henrik. Even Henrik, whose videos, were so... IsItObservable? That YouTube channel his videos were so helpful.

ADRIANA:
Henrik has great stuff.

EROMOSELE:
Yeah, really, really nice. Really, really practical, you know, and stuff. So because, those, those content was what helped me to ramp up my knowledge of OpenTelemetry. Through that knowledge, I was also able to speak in a conference, my first tech conference. You know, I was both a speaker and an attendee. Really interesting.

ADRIANA:
Oh my God. That's so cool. I love that. You know, and this is why I like these types of programs are so, so important to get people...You know, who normally wouldn't necessarily like, be in these in, in these open source communities like you rediscover you basically discovered that you liked this stuff because of of Outreachy. This is so great.

EROMOSELE:
Yeah. And then, you know, got to work with Yuri directly. Yuri was an amazing person. You know, he was very patient with me, because he understood where I was coming from, that I came from a non-tech background. I was able to finally get, you know, the project done after a while, and. Yeah, started working with Sematext. Sematext is an observability company based in the US, you know, like Datadog and, like the popular Dynatrace, you know, so it’s an observability firm. Integrating OpenTelemetry, you know, building an exporter for them. It's already it's already in process. So I think that's a very brief very, very brief. And yeah, also through the things I did in OpenTelemetry, I also got sponsored to OpenSource Summit, which I couldn't come because of my visa. But then...

ADRIANA:
So sad. I remember you telling me. Boo! Yeah, it was the Open Source Summit in, in Europe. Yeah.

EROMOSELE:
Right. Yeah, Vienna. Yeah, Vienna.

ADRIANA:
That's too bad. That's too bad. I hope I hope you, you someday get to visit Vienna because it's such a beautiful city.

EROMOSELE:
I hope so, too. And then got also got, the sponsorship to KubeCon, where I met amazing people like you finally, in person. And I met so many people that I had looked up to in the OpenTelemetry space at reading their content, you know, and it was really it was a wholesome experience. I'm still trying to recover from the... Once again, thank you so much for being such an awesome person.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Oh my God. Like, seriously, it's, you know like such a pleasure to get to meet you and yeah, we hung out a bunch at KubeCon North America. And I love how you're just like, you know, it's so hard.For those who watch the show who've never been to a KubeCon. It is a massive conference. It is overwhelming. And if you've never been before, that means you don't really know anybody. And so for you to, like, go and and introduce yourself like, it takes like, so much like courage, I think to, like, put yourself out there like, you know, and I think it's so important to be able to do that stuff because, you know, it gives you an opportunity to connect with, with really cool people. And I'm so glad we got to connect. And then we got to hang out a little extra too at SIG Boba, which was tons of fun. It was such a blast. Yeah. I'm glad, I'm glad. We got to meet, and then I had you, interview for Humans of OTel. And then I'm like, hey, you should be on my podcast because I think you have some cool stuff to say. Okay, I'm going to, continue with the icebreaker questions. I think I know the answer to this next one, but I might be wrong. Okay. Do you prefer Dev or Ops?

EROMOSELE:
Kind of hard. Okay. I think I'll go with dev, because currently that's the part I really have a lot of experience in currently. But, we're going to definitely have another conversation about DevRel you know, DevRel, kind of.

ADRIANA:
Okay. Yeah.

EROMOSELE:
I'm looking into that space. And so definitely going to get pointers.

ADRIANA:
All right okay. Next question. Do you prefer JSON or YAML.

EROMOSELE:
YAML. YAML.

ADRIANA:
I am with you.

EROMOSELE:
Definitely YAML I don't know, maybe because of my bias, because I've, because I was exposed to a lot of YAML. You know, everyone the first time I, go to write YAML, I was like, what's the problem with the indentations?

ADRIANA:
I know, I know how like so many people are like, I prefer JSON because I hate the indentation for YAML. I understand notation for YAML will like sometimes drive you crazy. It's fine, but like it's so much,

EROMOSELE:
The like way you get used to it. You know, you just just make so much sense. Like structure. So yeah.

ADRIANA:
I also hate curly braces because of Java. There's like so many curly braces in Java.

EROMOSELE:
Really. But but you know, for fun fact, last year I decided to face my fear and actually went to software engineering school, and I learned Java.

ADRIANA:
Nice, nice.

EROMOSELE:
Just to face, like fear. But I'm not writing Java.

ADRIANA:
It's. It's been a really long time now since I've last touched Java. I think the last time I want to say 2018, but every time I touch Java, it's like I have to reteach myself how to set up the JVM on my machine because I always forget and something always goes wrong. And then there's like other JVM that got installed on my machine from some other thing that I needed. And now, like the JVM, they're fighting with each other, and then you add Eclipse on to that, and then it's fighting with the JVM that's installed on your machine, along like if it got installed with another JVM. Like, I'm just like,

EROMOSELE:
Java is too strict. It's too strict. Like, once you miss one thing, everything feels.

ADRIANA:
You know, my my thing with Java, like, my, my main issue. And I'm told that it's it's gotten better is I find it very verbose, so, like, you need to, like, code the getters and the setters. And, like everything, everything is a class. And so you want to do the most mundane thing, and you still have to create a class and it's like, but I am told that things, have gotten more concise. Also, this is on my like to learn list, but I'm told that Kotlin is like, basically, if Java were retooled, that would be its beautiful baby.

EROMOSELE:
Are you serious?

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's a JVM based language. But it's, like, way more concise and cleaner than Java. So it's like Java improved, so.

EROMOSELE:
That sounds cool.

ADRIANA:
And I know a few people who tried out Kotlin and really like it, so.

EROMOSELE:
But it's like, isn’t that like, for Android or something?

ADRIANA:
Yeah, I believe so. I believe so, yeah.

EROMOSELE:
Okay.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, it is, it is used a lot in Android. So anyway, fun fact. Okay. Next question. Do you prefer spaces or tabs?

EROMOSELE:
I like I would say spaces because apparently there's some like I think you should want to read config if you want to write a YAML file. So they're not allowed. You're not allowed to use tabs. It's like there's always this kind of weird error that happens when you use tabs. So I just I prefer spaces. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
Yeah I, I did convert to spaces because of that. But like my tab in VS code is configured so that it converts it to a space. So I still use the tab key.

EROMOSELE:
Are you serious? How do you how do you? You better teach me how to do that.

ADRIANA:
I got I got to look at that setting. I'll. I'll see if I can find it and send it to you after. But yeah, that was that was miraculous for me. I'm like, ooh, okay.

EROMOSELE:
Cool it. That will be so helpful.

ADRIANA:
I don't like, you know, space based spaces like tab key get the job done. So I guess maybe I'm a hybrid. I'm like, I use spaces, but with the tab key makes it. There you go. Okay, two more questions. Do you prefer to consume content through video or text?

EROMOSELE:
Actually, this. So when I want to first, you know, understanding content, I first go to a video. Because sometimes text can be very overwhelming. So for me so I first go to video, maybe watch 2 or 3 videos, have a general overview of what the technology or topic is about. Then I now go down to the documentation, text. And recently I was going through the OpenTelemetry docs. And I remember when I started like one year ago because like, one year ago that I started learning about OpenTelemetry almost, almost a year right now. I was so overwhelmed by the documentation. I was so it looked so scary. I didn't know where to start. I started getting a lot of things. Traces, spans, metrics. I'm like, what's going on? So I see there was YouTube. I went to Henrik, you know, and I started reading some things and some things that are making sense. Context propagations that are making sense. And I watched, talks, you know, so from OpenTelemetry talks, then getting comfortable with that. I went through your blog, you know, with some things that, you know, and it said I didn't know. Then finally I went to documentation. So I'll say video first, then text.

ADRIANA:
Oh, nice. Nice. So they complement each other. But your your go to for starters is video. That's awesome. You have to say you know like I I'm the opposite. I'm I'm text until I hit the point of desperation and I can't find anything as a blog post then it's like okay fine, I'll watch a video. And I have to say like, there was a talk that I did at KubeCon I want to see maybe last year, it was on the Target Allocator, and I was like, trying to learn some stuff, and I could not find any materials on it. And then I found a thing, a video that Henrik had done. And I'm like, okay, thank you. With, with like, I think there was like a sample repo too. And like, thank you. Henrik. I finally figured this out. Yeah. Because, like, the docs, for the Target Allocator and for the OTel Operator, where we're a little, they need a little bit of improvement. And so, like, one of the things that I did personally, like after after I learned this stuff, I'm like, I'm going to go now into the readme and the docs and like and share my knowledge.

ADRIANA:
It’s easier because it's, I think, like, I love the OTel Operator. It's like one of my favorite components of OpenTelemetry. But, it's like, it's difficult to understand. Right. And until you play with it, you don't realize how magical it is. But like, it's you got to get past the documentation. So like making making the docs accessible is important.

EROMOSELE:
Yeah. You know, and what you're saying just, shows the power of content, like content creating. Content creating is because the creation is so powerful. Like, I did my whole journey with OpenTelemetry. I decided to write two blog posts I told you to review, and I think I sent around that time to to give you a suggestion and you gave really nice suggestions then at that time. But yeah, so the power of content, through those blog posts, I know a lot of people that have texted me privately and told me that, oh, they have blocked my blog posts, you know, on how to run the OpenTelemetry Demo, helped them get started with OpenTelemetry and it really help them, you know, than, you know, getting so overwhelmed with all the info. So content creating content is so, so important, you know, just helps you to learn more and then it also helps the community, you know.

ADRIANA:
Exactly.

EROMOSELE:
Yeah.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. And I think that's like such an important point because like, you know I don't know about you like, you mentioned like it does help you, it helps the community. But, for me, it's so helpful to like, if I can recreate my steps and then write about it, because especially, like, sometimes I write blog posts very selfishly because I'm like, I need it documented somewhere. And I've actually gone back to previous blog posts. I'm like, I know I wrote about this. How the hell do you do this again? I don't remember, so it's like an archive of my knowledge stored in the interwebs. But my thought process too is like, if I'm struggling, someone else is struggling to.

EROMOSELE:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

ADRIANA:
You know, sometimes I think, like, Oh, should I write about this because someone else wrote about it, too? Well, you know what doesn't hurt? Write about it. You never know who it's going to help. You might have a slightly different take that someone else doesn't have or like you're writing with, like, more up to date. You know, you're using like a more up to date version of that tool. So now your stuff is like probably more relevant than something like a blog post from like five years ago. Sad. Sad but true, right? Because tech evolves. So yeah, I agree with you. Creating that content is so important. And don't be shy. Don't be shy about creating the content. Like just like you do. Like, you know, you saw you've seen the benefits of, what you're doing that's so amazing.

EROMOSELE:
It's just that. Yeah, it's just like nowadays it's so hard to balance the two, like working, writing. Because writing takes a lot of effort. Because you...

ADRIANA:
Oh, my God.

EROMOSELE:
You have to do your ideas. You have to think about how the audience, how to explain things well so that people don't get lost. So yeah, I think that, you know, planning to get back into once I get my groove back on.

ADRIANA:
Awesome. That's awesome. I will say like, one thing that really helps with with writing, like I remember before I got into developer advocacy, I was managing a couple of teams. And I remember when I interviewed for for that job, I made sure that, like, writing blog posts was built into my job. Because... it's a lot of like, it's a lot of work, you know, it's like contributing to open source projects like, yeah, yay, awesome if you do it on your free time. But let's face it, contributing to an open source project can be like a full time job in itself, and I don't know about you, but with my free time, I kind of want to do something completely unrelated to what I do during the day, right? So I think being in a job where you're afforded the ability to contribute to open source projects, to contribute to community knowledge, even if your role isn't, you know, like specifically a developer advocacy role. Because I think, I think those, those community contributions matter and are important.

EROMOSELE:
Yeah, really, really important.

ADRIANA:
Awesome. Okay. We're down to the final question of of the icebreaker. Okay. Okay. What is your superpower?

EROMOSELE:
Okay. You probably know this. My superpower is the ability to. Relate with people.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, I can vouch for that. I can vouch for that. Yeah, yeah. You know, seriously, like, you come across as, like, so chill and just, like, so friendly and willing to learn and, Yeah, I think, like, you're super approachable. And I think, you know, like, like I'm, I'm actually kind of an introverted person. I'm not the type of person. I am for real introverted. And so, like, conferences, like, I've been lucky that at subsequent KubeCons I've, like, met more and more people. So I have like a bunch of conference friends. Yeah. But my first KubeCon, I was like, oh my God, just let me stand in a corner and hide from everybody. Because I think sometimes it's really, it's really hard to approach people. And so when, when an extroverted person comes and starts talking to me and I get like a nice chill vibe from them, you know, it's like I, I've heard it referred to as like, when when an extroverted person adopts you. I, I feel in some ways like you adopted me at KubeCon as well, like, you know, because your, your friendliness, like you were so approachable. Like, yeah, yeah, we can, we can chill. I think extroverted people putting introverted people at ease, I think, makes us seem extroverted as a result.

EROMOSELE:
You know what? What actually helps me is, I know one thing that if I'm nervous, the other person, is nervous too. Like, we are both nervous. Yeah. So let us take the first step. So. And the worst that can happen is the person sees, I don't want to speak, and then you move on. But the best that can happen is, you know, relationships that, you know, can be bigger than, you know, what was what it was at that time. So it's I think. The upside is always the reward is better than the risk. So I always go for the reward. But don't get me wrong, when I go to KubeCon, I was first terrified. Because when I was my first time outside Nigeria. So it was it was a full experience for me, full experience, full new experience for me. But I had a Colombian friend, we shared a room together. His name is Daniel Daniel Cifuentes. Really nice guy. And I will say he helped me to, you know, ease into the whole relating with new people and then, I met you. I can't I can't meet my heroes and not speak to them. No, that's not possible. So I had to approach you.

ADRIANA:
And I think we, we kept, bumping into each other. I know, like when, when I invited you to come for SIG Boba, I was like, I was heading out with. With Marino, who was a past guest podcast, and and and. Yeah, you're like, finishing off your day. You're like, hey, how's it going? I'm like, hey, we're going to SIG Boba. Want to come with? Like, what the heck? Why not? I'm also a lot more, likely to go for these, after events if it's like, rather than saying, like, oh, let's meet at the venue. If we go together, I'm like, okay, I'll go, because otherwise I'll be like, it's the end of the day... I don't want to go there. I'm just going to go back to my hotel room and just like, watch Netflix because, yeah, otherwise I'd be hiding out. So, I'm glad. I'm glad you joined. And it was, like, lots of fun. Plus, like, bubbles tea. That's cool. Yeah. So we got we got through the icebreaker questions. Hooray! Congratulations. So, you know, like, OpenTelemetry has been an overarching, topic, of our conversation. And you said that you got into it through Outreachy. And so, was it because of of your work in OpenTelemetry that you, you ended up getting, like your Outreachy work in OpenTelemetry that you ended up getting your, your job at Sematext?

EROMOSELE:
Oh, yeah. The.. I had worked on the Collector, you know, before, and because of the conference I had to go for, I had to learn so much about the Collector, you know, so just to say conference inspired learning or something like that, you know, so because of the. I didn't want to fall, so I had to go. I learned so much about Collector. Yeah. Yeah. So I was able to, you know, show so much at that time that it is possible to auto instrument an application without adding code. Yeah. And that was really, you know, mindblowing. So they employed me because of that, because I had that skill and I could... Yeah. I could I had, I had not done this before, but and also probably have is that I have the ability to learn fast, you know, if it's structured, I can learn very fast and I can, grab things easily. So I had not built an exporter before, but. Yeah, I looked through a lot of code or the exporter code was able to find patterns and similarities, and I was like, yeah, I can build an exporter for Sematext and OpenTelemetry and they were like, okay, come onboard and let's do that. So yeah. So that's.

ADRIANA:
Yeah! That's amazing. And you know, it's that is a great superpower. And I think this is the superpower that really, differentiates you know, the awesome people from the not so awesome people in tech because like, look, let's face it, you can't be on top of every new technology that's out there ever, right. And so you kind of you pick a technology that, you know, resonates with you and, and then you learn it like, you know, the, the stuff that I did when I finished university, so different from what I do now. And like, you know, and I learned OpenTelemetry on the fly for a job as well. When I was managing, I was managing a team, an observability practices team, and I was trying to get the company to use OpenTelemetry. And I'm like, I don't know that much about observability. I don't know that much about OpenTelemetry. Let me learn about it. So I learned about it on the fly, too, right. Because you got to do that. You got to learn. You got to learn fast. You become you become the expert, as quickly as you can. Learn... Sometimes it means like not learning, maybe not necessarily fully in depth at first. Right? But it's like learning enough. And then you can start asking questions and being curious and be like, oh, how does this work?

How does that work? And I think what you said also about, you know, like you never wrote an exporter, but you look through the code and you look for patterns and I think like that's what we have to do as a software engineers is we look for the patterns. It's like learning a new language, right? Like you learned, you learn Java, you learn JavaScript, you learn Go. There are different languages, different syntax. They have different paradigms, but also they have some similarities. And so you learn from your experience, draw on your experience with like one language to sort of like get through learning the other language, which is cool.

EROMOSELE:
Yeah. It's so nice.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. So, what's, you know, as, as someone who's, been been involved in OpenTelemetry for the, for the last little while. You know, you mentioned, like, the different resources, for, for OpenTelemetry that you've, that you've relied on. What about, how would you say, like, your experience with the OpenTelemetry community has been because that's that's always, like something that's that I love about OpenTelemetry is the community. So what are what are your thoughts around that?

EROMOSELE:
Yeah. I would say my experience with the community was and has been still great. I can I can mention his name. Dimitri. He was so helpful during my, during my internship because most times, the issues that I have to, solve, he will be do like, he will be the one reviewing those in the past. And then he was always like, giving me tips and pointers. Okay, try it. Yeah, try try this. Go like this. You know, and he really helped me, you know, in getting my first PR merged. I remember I remember when it first got merged, I was like, whaaat? I feel like I'm...

ADRIANA:
It’s like a party, right?

EROMOSELE:
I was like, wow. I contributed to open source. And it was just really an exhilarating feeling, you know, knowing that. Yeah, someone like me that had like a month ago, I had no knowledge of Go. No knowledge of OpenTelemetry. And then two weeks, three weeks after I made my first contribution. So like I always I always advise people, even in my community, you know, I advise people that don't be scared because the what stops a lot of people from contributing to open source is to feel like, oh, I have to be like a senior engineer. I have to know everything. I have to have to be so good. Twenty years’ experience. Nobody will care about what I have to do. Well, it is not really true. Because the people in the community, first of all, are willing to help. Well, I can’t speak about all communities, but OpenTelemetry, for example. If you're honest, you told them that. Oh, this is what I know. This is what I can do. What can I start from? You know, this thing called good first issues? You know, they have good first. Yeah. So, not so technical, but you can just, you know, start your journey from there. And I believe that once you get the first PR merged you know, this, this drive to do more, you know, I think that yeah, I think on my first PR merged, I, I doubled down, you know, I doubled down on my learnings.

EROMOSELE:
I doubled down on my Go. And I was able to get five other PRs merged.

ADRIANA:
Wow. That's awesome. So it had inspired you. It kind of gave you that kind of boost, right. Confidence boost. And inspiration to to contribute more. That's great. And I so agree with you. Like getting your first PR merged is like I don't know if you've never experienced that. I hope like folks out there, I hope you get to experience it because there's nothing like it. And, you know, like I think you you made a really important point to like, you know, don't be shy about like, what you think is worthy of contribution because it is open source and people always need help. Yeah. And especially if you find something where there's a gap. So, you, you've noticed something like there's thing in the documentation or like you noticed a bug or whatever, or as you said, you you look through the issues, list for a particular repo and see if there's something where you're like, I think I can do that.

EROMOSELE:
Another thing like I would like to speak about is, you know, like people like us, like when I, when I came for, like, one of the reasons that made me like, apply for KubeCon and all was that I hadn't really seen a lot of Nigerians living in Nigeria, like I saw Nigerians that were not living in Nigeria, like America, Canada. But Nigerians living in Nigeria. I didn’t really see so, so much representation, you know.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

EROMOSELE:
From our community and, and in our community, like the the tech space is really booming. Kubernetes... I had a conversation with Jake. Jake is a CNCF Ambassador. I'm sure you know, you know, basically talking around topics around how to build and improve a community here in, you know, Nigeria and Africa at large because there's so much there's so much that's currently happening here. But, the access to, you know, the like, you know, this, you know, everybody sees what's going on in the US. You know, it's very easy to see what's going on in the US. What's going on. Yeah. But then, you know, places like Africa, like things are actually going on, but no one is really seeing what's happening. If no one knows what you're doing, then, you know, no one can call you for it. So I just one of the things that inspired me to actually apply for that sponsorship, you know, to go to attend KubeCon, you know, see how these things work and how can we bring, you know, this kind of thing. So, our own local community, like, I spoke to Jake about, you know, something, starting something like a KubeCon Africa.

ADRIANA:
How cool would that be? It's cool... I know there have been some KCDs in Africa.

EROMOSELE:
Ghana and Nigeria. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
That's so cool. That's cool.

EROMOSELE:
But there's so much, so much things can be done, you know, in the whole, you know, building the community space. And, you know, hopefully I'll get tips from people like you that are so good at this. At building community.

ADRIANA:
Hey, we learn from each other. I love that so much. And yeah, I mean, I think it's really important. And this a conversation that I've had with a few people too, like even even stuff about like, language barriers. Right. That there's so much, so much stuff like so much open source contribution is done in English. And if you know English, great. If English is not your strong language, that it's like you're shutting your doors to like a bunch of brilliant people who work, which is not their first language. And why should it be? I mean, you know, you're born in a different country. It's a different first language. So I think it's really cool that there is, so much of an effort now that you see in the CNCF around, like international like internationalization of documentation, like OpenTelemetry, I think, the docs are now available in a number of languages, which is really cool. Even in Portuguese, I found out. And it's, it's easy to forget like if you're, if you, if you speak English relatively well, you just sort of like. Yeah. Of course. Like, what what about other people, you know. So I think representation matters. Making people aware of, of other communities and other places that are not North America, not necessarily Western Europe, like tech exists in all parts of the world. And I think, it's really important to to bring that to the forefront. So I love what you're doing. I love that you're, you know, the hustle is on and you're just, like, excited to learn and you're putting yourself out there. I think it's fantastic. And you're so young too. I love it, yeah. Well, we're coming up on time. But before we finish off, I wanted to ask if you have any parting words of wisdom.

EROMOSELE:
Well, to the. Well, I'm talking to newbies now. Not to the experienced guys, but to the newbies out there, don't be scared to take that step, that first step, because that first step is what can change your life entirely. If I was scared to take. I was scared to take the Outreachy step. But I just told myself, “What's the worst that can happen?” They won't pick me, I won't, you know? I'll. I'll still be fine, you know? But what's the best I can happen? The best that can happen is that my life can, you know, change forever. So. So everyone out there, that's still scared to take that first step? You want to start a company? You have an idea. You know, don't be scared to take that first step. Take that first step, and things will meet you on the way. And two, three years down the line, you'll be happy you did.

ADRIANA:
Aw, that's so great. I love that so much. And before we wrap up, there is one more thing that I want to mention. Because you've, you know, you got your start through Outreachy. Can you tell folks, how does that they can apply to Outreachy if they're interested and maybe just talk a little bit about the selection process?

EROMOSELE:
Okay. Okay. Cool. So Outreachy has like two... I’ll say two cohorts. So there's one that's currently happening in a few days starting in a few days. And then we have another one in August. So you have two every year. So to apply to Outreachy you have to write five essays. Yeah. So there's no like there's no exams or anything. You just have to write five essays And in those essays you have to basically talk about how you are, you know, underrepresented in the location that you live in, how you have been underrepresented in the tech industry and the location that you live in, you know, basically share your story. You know, share how probably, you know, for women, you know, the whole issue around, subjugation, you know, from the society that we live in. For someone like me... So, in our state, we are classified... People classify us as people that practice voodoo, you know, like witchcraft.

So, like, most times, most of, the wins that I, you know, had done when I was coming up, people just say, he's from that state. He's probably doing something on shady underneath, you know, so there's really it's really terrible. And the funny thing about under these things is that you may not even know you're going through these things. Like, you may not even be aware because it might be so normal to you, but for some people, it's just it's normal to, be talked down on, you know, talked down. Yeah. So you have to actually sit down and think because, man, there's so many things that you don't know that you are currently facing that are not normal, that are very, very abnormal. If you can write, write those stories in, you know, in five essays, the only... Adriana, maybe you can add the, the link to the application at all.

ADRIANA:
Oh yeah. Absolutely. I'll, I'll include that in the show notes for sure.

EROMOSELE:
Yeah. Awesome. So, write you write your story and then if you get selected, oh, you got you go through the first phase. So the, the second phase of the second phase, you have, you have to pick an open source project. And I picked OpenTelemetry. I'm so happy I did, but yeah.

ADRIANA:
Did you randomly pick it or was it something about it where you're like, this is something that interests me because of something you read?

EROMOSELE:
Yeah, yeah. You know, so I was, I would say I was late. I was late and I was also very interested in, you know, then I was learning DevOps. So like DevOps of seemed very familiar. So I'm like, okay, let's go for OpenTelemetry. And it seemed like the most familiar thing for me at that time. Yeah. But there are many other projects. Yes. Wikimedia. There's OCaml really, really other awesome open source communities. So then you have to pick the project and then you have to contribute to the project and be very you have to stand out because most times we compete with a lot of people that I was competing with like 59 other people. Don't. Yeah. Don't don't be scared. Because at first I was scared because the people I was competing with were like, senior engineers, like, have been doing this for long.

And I was like, oh my gosh, how will I get this done? But, you know, the mentors are not biased. They see effort. So they see that you put in so much effort because someone that has been writing Go for the past ten years, you know, the effort I'll put in is like the same effort you put in and they grade effort more than experience, because what they want to do is they want to empower people. So once you get in welcome to Outreachy. So that's how...

ADRIANA:
That's great. That's great. So I love that because you know it's really and I think this is what tech should be all about. It's not necessarily what skills do you have now. It's like what is your potential. And I think that's what it is like. I think we need to be able to invest in people based on their potential, because otherwise you like miss out on awesome people, right? So that's that's great. Is the internship is it a paid or unpaid internship?

EROMOSELE:
Well, it's paid - $7,000.

ADRIANA:
Right on! That's amazing. I ask because like there's some internships where people are like working a lot and then they it's like an unpaid internship. That's great. Awesome, awesome. Very cool. Feels like very worthwhile. And and just to, clarify. So you said you need to have done a contribution in the open source project that you selected. So, so you need so like, when you applied for Outreachy, you had already done like an OTel contribution at that point?

EROMOSELE:
No. I hadn't. I had no...

ADRIANA:
Oh, okay. Oh, it's just like as part of the part of the internship, like, once you get selected, you.

EROMOSELE:
Yeah, yeah.

ADRIANA:
You have to, you have to fulfill that as a, as a requirement of the program. Cool, cool. And then and then, as part of Outreachy then are you like, because, like, if I recall, like, Juraci, he was at Grafana before. Yuri was at, at RedHat Both awesome guys, by the way. I can totally vouch. Juraci was actually on the podcast before, and, but so are you working then under the umbrella of OpenTelemetry or under the umbrella of, like, whatever company that, like the your kind of Outreachy mentor is is working at?

EROMOSELE:
I'm working on an umbrella of OpenTelemetry.

ADRIANA:
Okay. Okay.

EROMOSELE:
So they they're like my mentors.

ADRIANA:
That's awesome. Well. Thank you. Thank you so much for for explaining how the Outreachy program works. I think this is, a really, really cool opportunity, especially for for folks who are looking to get into open source and get some, some cool work experience. And, yeah, it sounds it sounds like a great program. Juraci always talks about Outreachy, and now I understand why he's so passionate about it. So this is this is truly, truly amazing. And, you know, that's a perfect way to to wrap up our episode. So thank you so much, Eromosele for geeking out with me today. Y'all, don't forget to subscribe and be sure to check out the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media. Until next time...

EROMOSELE:
Peace out and geek out!

The One Where We Geek Out on Leadership with Parveen Khan

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Adriana Villela, Hannah Maxwell, Parveen Khan) — Tue, 8 Apr 2025 04:00:00 +0000

About our guest:

Parveen Khan is a Quality Practice Lead at CFC, passionate about ensuring that delivering high-quality products is a shared responsibility. She enjoys working with teams to improve processes, tools, and methodologies that help create better products. Parveen is also an international speaker, sharing her testing experiences to inspire others worldwide. Outside of work, she loves spending time with her two children.

Find our guest on:

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show notes:

Transcript:
ADRIANA:
Hey, fellow geeks. Welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And geeking out with me today. I have Parveen Khan. Welcome, Parveen.

PARVEEN:
Thank you. Thank you for having me.

ADRIANA:
I am so happy to have you on. And for for those of you who have been following this podcast, you may remember that our precursor podcast was, On-Call Me Maybe with my former coworker, Ana Margarita Medina, and Parveen was actually one of our early guests on On-Call Me Maybe. And I'm so happy to have her join me for Geeking Out this time around. And, Parveen, where are you calling from today?

PARVEEN:
Yeah. So. Yeah. Thanks. Again. Thanks again. Like, I remember, like, we I, Yeah, I joined you last time when you, when this podcast was the. And then again, we are meeting like again. So it's it's awesome. Yeah. I'm dialing from London. And. Yeah, I'm looking forward for a chat today. Geeking Out.

ADRIANA:
Yay. All right. Yes, yes, we will geek out on all things. And I should also mention too, like, when we first connected, through On-Call Me Maybe, it was when I was doing a piece on, how, Observability is not just for, for SREs, and it was actually inspired by a conversation that you and I had, when you reached out to me on LinkedIn. And then I was so like, I was so blown away, but, by our conversation, I'm like, I have to write this down as a blog post. And then it it turned into this, like, whole thing, and it was just amazing and so many awesome things came, came out of that conversation. So I'm very grateful that we had a chance to meet.

PARVEEN:
Yeah, absolutely. It was more of a intersection between quality and Observability and that conversation. Yes, absolutely.

ADRIANA:
That's right, that's right. Well, we'll dig into that shortly. But first let us start with our icebreaker questions. Okay. First question. Are you a lefty or a righty?

PARVEEN:
I'm a righty.

ADRIANA:
Okay. Next question. Do you prefer iPhone or Android?

PARVEEN:
Android.

ADRIANA:
Do you prefer Mac, Linux, or Windows?

PARVEEN:
I was a very Mac person, but now I'm okay. Like Windows. Fine. Like I'm very Mac person. Yes.

PARVEEN:
I prefer Mac.

ADRIANA:
Which one do you, end up using for work? Out of curiosity? PK: Windows. Is by choice or by, by by required by job.

PARVEEN:
Required by job. Yes.

ADRIANA:
Fair enough, fair enough.

PARVEEN:
If it was by choice, I would say, Mac. Please.

ADRIANA:
I'm with you. I'm with you. Okay. Next question. Do you have a favorite programing language?

PARVEEN:
Yeah, I love, I love, I used to love working with Java. That's my first favorite and forever favorite language. Which I learned. And, I used to work and I used to enjoy writing, programs on it, and, like, I think Selenium when I, back in those days when I used to use Selenium, I think Java was my preferred language. And then I think a lot of other tools came in where you kind of like use different languages, like JavaScript, TypeScript. But I think Java, Java is my favorite programing language.

ADRIANA:
Awesome. Okay. Next question. Do you prefer dev or ops?

PARVEEN:
I prefer DevOps. Like both together.

ADRIANA:
Ooh. Love it, love it. Okay. Next one. Do you prefer JSON or YAML?

PARVEEN:
Tough one. Okay, I think I prefer JSON. Yeah, I prefer JSON. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
Cool. Okay. Do you prefer spaces or tabs? Not making it easy, am I?

PARVEEN:
Tab. Yes. Tab. Maybe. Is tab.

ADRIANA:
All right. All right, two more questions left. Do you prefer to consume content through video or text?

PARVEEN:
Through text? I love reading.

ADRIANA:
AV: I’m with you. Like, yeah. Yeah.

PARVEEN:
Like hear video.s Then you have to be prepared, like carry your headphones and all that stuff. So, like text is like, you can open up everywhere, anywhere. Read. I love reading.

ADRIANA:
I agree, and distraction free. I get very distracted when I watch video.

PARVEEN:
Yeah, I'm not a good listener, I guess. Like, that's how I feel. Like I can't listen. I can't yeah, I can't listen to longer time, but I can read for as long as I can.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah I'm with you, I'm with you I found the only way that I can, do video. Like, especially for learning is either, like, walking around the house listening to the video, so, like a podcast. Or if I'm, like, distracted. So I have, like, a treadmill in my home office and a bike in my home office. I'm like, if I'm doing one of those things, then it keeps my brain distracted enough that I can, like, concentrate on the video. More than if I was just sitting there.

PARVEEN:
Yeah, yeah. Is it? I can't really I feel like I'm just I'm just doing one thing like. Yeah, it's just makes me like I can't concentrate for a longer time. If it's a video. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

ADRIANA:
It's hard. Okay. Final question. What is your superpower?

PARVEEN:
Superpower? Superpower is at. I feel like I'm, I'm a very. I'm very open to learning always. And I ask for help. I don't shy away, like, you know, I don't feel like. Oh. Like what? What if, like, people think they. You know, what if they say no to me? What if, like, you know, people think that I don't know this, so I think, like, this is my superpower. This has helped me a lot in my career, I guess, like, you know, I, I, I just reach out to people. Let me I think I feel like I'm like, I'm lucky enough in that sense. Like, you know, I reach out to people and I ask them, I ask like, you know, I can reach out and say, hey, you know what? I love reading your article. Do you have a few minutes? I want to really chat with you. I just ask away people and I get time to speak to people. I'm. I feel like asking help is my superpower.

ADRIANA:
That is amazing. And it's the perfect segue into our conversation. And, you know, I, I just, I can't underscore enough, like, how important it is to ask for help. You make such an excellent, excellent point. Because we can, you know, it's so easy to I think as you get more senior in your career and people look up to you as having being the one with all the answers. And yeah, I think we need to get out of this mindset of not being the ones with all the answers. It's okay to not be the one with all the answers, and to stop being shy, scared, and to say, I don't know that. Like I'll even do stuff like, I'm sorry, dumb question. Can you explain this to me?

PARVEEN:
Yes, yes, absolutely. And I think somewhere like, you know, if you if you have that any kind of title or something, you feel like, oh people will think that they like, you know, you need to know everything. No, it's not like I feel like it's never, it's more about asking away those questions. Asking away for help and saying that, you know what? I might not know this. Like, you know, maybe let's let's, let's brainstorm. Let's understand what this is. And it's always about, working like it's not all about you knowing everything and you telling people, right? It's all about, how can you get different perspectives and how can you get, different solutions to it? Because if you were the only one know it knows everything. There is kind of like always everything is going to work in the same way of how you think about it. And then you will never have other perspectives and you will never have, you will never get to get more creative solutions to the problems that you're working on within the team.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah, I, I totally agree. And that's why, you know, it, it, it reminds me of like when how you and I met. Right? Yeah. You reached out to me on LinkedIn. I think you read one of my articles on Observability. And you're like, hey, I just want to have a chat.

PARVEEN:
Yeah, exactly.

ADRIANA:
It was such a great chat. Like, as I said earlier in, in the recording, like, you inspired me so much through our conversation because you opened my eyes to new possibilities that I hadn't considered before. And I think that's that's what tech is all about, is like being open minded, because we can't evolve without the open mindedness, especially in technology.

PARVEEN:
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. That's that. Yeah. See, that's the amazing thing, right? Like, I get to meet like, you know, one just one little like, you know, drop off message or like, you know, asking of it. And I... you get a lot of people, you build your network and I think right now again, these are the cool topic, right. Like networking is so, so, so, so important right now. And that doesn't mean that you have to meet or like it's not about meeting in person only. It's more about how do you build those connections, how do you build that support system. And it's not about like helping in the sense, like it's about how can you learn from each other? How can you support each other? How can you uplift each other? I think it's it's so important. So I think until unless you speak until unless you reach out until unless you take that first step, it's never possible. Like, you know, you never know whom to get connected. Like if you wait for an opportunity or if you wait for attending a conference, only then it becomes like very limited scope for you to build that network, right?

ADRIANA:
Yeah. That's right. It's not you. People can't shouldn't you shouldn't wait as you said. Just you shouldn't wait for people to come to you. You have to you have to go to them. And I want to point out also like something that you did when you reached out to me on LinkedIn, which I thought was like, you know, I think this is the way that should be done because you know, I'm sure, like me, you probably get tons of connection requests, on a regular basis. And a lot of the times I'm like, I, you know, like, I don't know who you are. Like, yeah. And like, I have zero context. And I remember when you reached out to me, you had like a very specific purpose. So like your connection request, you know, you explain why it is that you wanted it to connect. And I like I find those connection requests a lot more meaningful. And it reminds me also of like, I, I, I, I mentored, someone a number of years ago, and I became his mentor. I don't know how he found me on LinkedIn, but he reached out to me on LinkedIn, and he's like, hey, I would love it if, like, I could be, if you could be my mentor. And I thought it was like, you know, first of all, like that he just reached out to me out of the blue. But it was like, send a thoughtful message on LinkedIn. And like, it seemed genuine. Just like when you reached out, it seemed genuine. So like, I will respond to those types of messages.

PARVEEN:
Yeah.

ADRIANA:
Like these genuine requests, conversations where you're like, yeah, we can we can form a relationship and, you know, like some lovely things come out of me mentoring him. Some lovely things have come out of us connecting. Yeah. And I think that's so important is, is how you approach people when, when you're going to connect with them. Because nobody, nobody wants to just, like, “Hey, connect with me!”

PARVEEN:
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And you know, I, I learned this from, one of the course that was given by I don't remember the name, but at ThoughtWorks when I was working about the social media, like especially about the LinkedIn. And I think since then, like, I think I've started using like I realized that. Oh, yeah. Like when you send a connection request, it's more about why do you want like it's not about telling, why do you want to connect with something like you might have got like, like something relatable or. Yeah, like you want to build a network because you share the same, topic or there might be some connection. Right. So you might have, like, I feel like taking the extra effort of writing that note feels like, you really want to connect. It's not just a click button saying that send request and send it with like, you know, it's not about that. It's more about like, you know, this person or you have read this person's article or like, you know, you you've enjoyed doing something like, you know, you just mentioned that. And, since then, I think this is a practice that I've tried maintaining myself whenever I, whenever I send a connection request to anyone like, if I want to get connected, there is a specific, reason why I want to be connected, because they might be sharing some content which I want to be learning from them. So saying, like, I want to see the post that I follow based on that, I this and and I write that note specifically and I... same thing. Like, when I get a connection request with the message there, I'm like, wow, they took some time to write that. Like, you know, whatever that would be like, even if it's like I would like to connect because I want to grow my network. Even that little thing, I feel like, okay, they have taken some effort to write, which means they really want to connect. So let me just say yes. Is how I go.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah. And then it also made me think of like, I've also gotten some connection requests, which I thought were honestly like kind of annoying and insulting where like, you know, they, they've bothered to write the nice connection message and then you connect with them and then they immediately send you a message like, hey, thanks for connecting. By the way, check out my product. Oh....

PARVEEN:
Yes, oh yes. Oh yeah.

ADRIANA:
Dude. And I'm sorry, but like, I will I will remove that connection right away because I know that's offensive. That's just offensive.

PARVEEN:
Yeah yeah.

ADRIANA:
No no. Like at least try to develop a rapport first.

PARVEEN:
Yes.

ADRIANA:
If you want me to even consider.

PARVEEN:
Yeah I got you.

ADRIANA:
Which there is no guarantee.

PARVEEN:
Absolutely force messages I know like if I, if I don't respond to one message it's like okay I don't want to continue. That's that's the message. But then yeah, I know, I know if you connect. Yeah. Like these people, a lot of people where they kind of sell the services or like sell the product, it's like, I'm fine with that. If you try once and message and say that this is where it is, and if I'm really interested, I want to get back to you. But then you don't. You shouldn't be chasing again and again. That will absolutely lose my interest in what you're trying to sell. More than saying you look at it.

ADRIANA:
Oh, yeah, especially the ones that are, you know, kind of the they're trying to make you feel guilty, like, oh, you know, clearly my message hasn't resonated with you and I'll leave you alone. But just reply to tell me that you're not interested. Like, buddy, I've ignored your last four messages because you're being forceful and annoying. Do you think I’m going to reply to this now? Take notes people. The right way to connect, versus the wrong way. So yeah. But I, you know, when I want to, I want to go back a little bit because, you know, when, when you and I met, I, I think you you mentioned you were working at ThoughtWorks before. Yeah. You were in a QA individual contributor role.

PARVEEN:
That's correct. Yeah. I was more of a consultant. Yes.

ADRIANA:
Okay. Yeah. So, and now you've, now you've switched jobs recently? Recently? Or how recently have you definitely, since we like.

PARVEEN:
A year. Yeah. I think a year. Yeah, it's been like a year and a month, a couple of months. But yeah, I. I've, I've joined as a, quality practice lead. It's, insurance based company, CAC. So we are pretty much insurance heavy, uh, company. So yeah, I'm looking as a quality practice lead. So it's, it's a transition between like working as a consultant, going on two different clients and helping them. And now it's more about like, yeah. As a, as a quality practice lead, working across the department and across the organization to help, help them build quality practices, quality processes. And it's more about how do we think about quality throughout. It's, it's it's it's lot more about how do we, it's more about influencing and get driving, quality through and by different, different approaches, whether it's people tool or processes, you name it, anything based on anything, you know, maybe you're trying to influence or you're trying to like, help them to see. It's kind of like headlights, you know, showing the light, of how to build quality and think about quality. And what do you need to do? Why do we need to do that? On a higher scale is what I can say, yeah.

ADRIANA:
Cool. So it's basically been two big transitions for you, which is, one out of consulting, which I worked as a consultant for for years. I can definitely appreciate like it's it's definitely a mindset shift from always like working for different clients to like now you're just working basically at the same client effectively really. And, and then moving into like a leadership position, which I also like is a big it can be a shock to the system as well, if you're used to being like an individual contributor. So, yeah, I what I guess, let's, let's do this as a two parter. What was, how did it feel going from from consulting the, into, to basically working, in non consulting and then part two, what are, like we can talk about like the transition into a leadership role.

PARVEEN:
Yeah. So before working as a consultant at ThoughtWorks. So before that I used to work for companies. So I've, I've always, like, mostly on the startups as well. So I've always loved seeing, the, like the whole transformation of the product of like how we started building the product and how it has been gone live where people have been using. So I used to always love the journey, seeing that journey and me being part of that. And then I joined ThoughtWorks where I wanted to explore different domains, different, and it's it's not to say like you want to work at different companies, but still you're a part of one company. So that's how I see that as. And then again, I was like, it was it was really. Yeah, it's it was really interesting to explore so many, different domains that I go to work with, like, you know, and it was, those challenges, it kind of helped me build my, toolset, my skill set. So it's like it's more about, like, facing all those challenges and working with so many smart people. Like, you know, ThoughtWorks, they have really amazing consultants like you get to again, like, you know, you get to you. It's not about just get going there and working for clients, but the access that you get to the smartest people whom you can talk, talk to and you can learn from them.

And, you know, so that was even more valuable for me. So I think that experience has taught me a lot, in terms of how as a consultant, you go, in a completely new place where you don't know, like, you know, you it's not even your team, not even your product. But then how do you go there and, you know, and start from day one, how do you start making changes like it's the. Because, when you work at a company, it's a, like a slow paced even the is just one thing. But then when you actually work, it's it's a slow pace. But when you as a consultant, it's like it's not you won't get a two year contract or a four year contract, right? You just get like you need to start, like you need to make make changes, like you need to show your impact from day one. So I think that that has taught me a lot like, it was really valuable things that I've got from. And then, and then I, I just wanted to be come back. Like. I was more like, yeah, I've learned a of it's not to say that I've learned everything, but I've learned enough that I've built my own toolset, I've built my own skillset. And now I want to use those somewhere, in a company where, I want to see the whole journey, the whole transition, and apply all those. So that's where, when I got this, then I came across this opportunity when, when they reached me out, I was like, oh, quite effectively, this is, this is really interesting because, as like, I'm always passionate to, like, help people like, you know, join teams and help them, to, like, advocate about quality. That's my favorite thing. You know? So and they were looking for this and I was like, oh, yeah, why not let me like, you know, and, I really loved it. And now it's more yes, the transition is like, it's more about it's like, you are it's you don't you are not doing it, actually. But how do you get people do what you want to do? It's like... it's it's like. Yeah, in simple terms, I think that's, that's that's what it is.

Like you are not doing it. But then how do you get people to do it? How do you build that trust that people will trust you? What you're saying and, they will they will join you in, in your journey. And how do you and trust and then credibility, right? How do they know that they should trust. They should believe what you're saying is right. Like, you know, and that's where you you're I feel like, you know, that's where your personal brand comes in as well. And that's where what you, what you put out yourself. Out there comes, very handy, I guess, you know. And all of these, I think it becomes more of like, okay, how do you, how do you work with the teams where they trust you and, that you're trying to solve the the challenges and they support you? And then how do you get a buy in from the leadership to say that this is the right challenge that we have to solve? How do you pitch in like you know that this is the priority right now because you can't do everything at the same time. So you need to pick up the. And when you join a company, when you see from a fresh perspective, you'll see many challenges, many problems or or not even a problems, maybe some gaps, or maybe they're doing certain things and you want to. There's more room for improvement as well. And you'll see many things. Right. And then you can't just go like, oh, let's work on all of these. So you have to pick what. So it's more about like how do you start thinking? How do you start thinking about how do you pitch that this is more important? And how do you prove that this will work? This is like this is like it's about goal. You know, KPIs. And probably metrics like, you know, and then two layers that is kind of like you're in the middle layer and then your team working on it, like, you know, trying to and how do you support them. So I think it's. Yeah. So this is the difference.

ADRIANA:
A lot of dimensions to it, basically. Yeah. Yeah. And you touched on, on like so many interesting things. And I think the first one that I want to touch on is you mentioned, you know, like when you're working as a consultant, you're, you're you basically have to hit the ground running. You have to be productive from day one. And it, as you said, so different than when you, when you join like, a company, where, where you're, you have like, that ramp up time and it's I, I, I'll bet... you mentioned that you've worked in startups previously as well. I'll bet that that startup experience, helped you a lot with, the consulting side of things in terms of the hit the ground running thing.

PARVEEN:
Yes. Yes.

ADRIANA:
Which, yeah. I mean, it's it's daunting. It's exciting, especially when you're younger, you. know. Like, that go, go go mentality that you hit a, you hit an age where you're like, okay, I could just like take, take a little bit of time to breathe.

PARVEEN:
Yeah, absolutely. I think that that that's a good point. You make a good point you made because I of course, like when you're working in a startup is like you have to there's so many different hats, you know, doing one thing at a time. And, because speed... always delivery and speed is, the, priority quality goes, takes the backseat always. Yeah. And then that's where I think, you know, the challenge is like, how do you bring that up? How do you how do you keep you resilience, in such a way that you just don't give up, like, you know, you just, keep trying, keep trying. And how do you try? How do you try to solve the same problem? By talking in a different way each time. You know, I think that's that has helped. That helped a lot in consultancy. Like, you know, when you go there, I think it's more I think it's it's another layer on top of it to say that, okay. Like, you know, this is fast moving, but I think it was with ThoughtWorks, it was, so, good that it was like they already had the, the relationship built, with the consultancy, the name itself. And then when you go there, the people already have the trust in you. So that made it easier to start jump start the journey there. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
That's good. Yeah. Because I mean as you said, that can be like building up that trust can be really tricky because especially when you come in as a consultancy into an organization, there's going to be the skepticism. What are they trying to do? Are they trying to like rattle, rattle things around. And then and as a consultant, you have to be so careful and not come in and say everything's crap. Yeah.

PARVEEN:
Yeah, yeah.

ADRIANA:
Otherwise...

PARVEEN:
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And and you'll feel like you're always an outsider. But anyway, so many like clients that I've worked with being I thought was I think I've never felt that it was always like be a part of the team because we always. Yeah, yeah. So that's some of the things that I think that that kind of again, this is where right, your credibility, your credibility and the trust both go so hand-in-hand that it will help, in smoother collaboration.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think there's the aspect of like the company's credibility, which helps. And then like your personal credibility helps as well. And then I'll bet then that translates quite nicely when you, you know, when when you switch jobs, having had that consulting experience of like, yeah, you come in. I mean, everyone's a problem solver, but I feel like the, the consultant is like that kind of problem solver plus plus plus. Like you're you're always kind of looking at it. You're putting the situation, holistically. Right. And I feel like coming in to an organization from a consultancy background, you probably have that extra you know, like bit of advantage where you're, you can come in, assess the situation, be sure not to tell them that their baby is ugly because so they don't get offended.

PARVEEN:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yes. It's it's more like yeah I think I see that as it's more like when you actually working for a long, long years or even if you took a year or a couple of years, you kind of get blindness So it's like when someone comes in with and they kind of bring you a fresh pair of like perspective glasses. I would say in that sense, yeah. And it's more about like evolving what you have done. So because like software development right, or quality development, DevOps, everything, it's always like it's never like once you have built something a processes or you have what some tool it's going to be forever, right? It's evolving all the time. It has to evolve all the time. It has to. We have to always innovate, whether it's a be process, whether it'll be tool or whether it be the the way we looking right ways of working. Yeah. So it's the same thing like you know new people come in and they bring their own expertise, they bring their own experience, they bring their own ideas. And and it's it might not always be that the companies might be having a lot of problems, which is why they're trying to bring the change.

But it might more like they are coming with the fresh perspective and they're coming with more, because you've been in that situation like in the same context for so long that you, you kind of like you get used to it. So you kind of sometimes miss that. So someone coming in so they kind of come with fresh perspective and come up with more, new ideas to improve. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love that, I love that. And it's funny because I'm kind of experiencing the same thing, because I, I switched jobs, in November and, and, you know, it's, so part of it is like, I'm getting to know, like the company's product, and realizing, like, all these things that it does that I didn't know it did.

ADRIANA:
And so, you know, I'm like, as I learn more stuff, I'm like, oh, my God. Tell me more about this. Tell me more about that. And trying to understand, like, I think, you know, coming in from fresh perspective, you can't help but wonder, like, okay, why is something designed this way? Have you thought about that way? And then when you. I think if you approach it like asking, asking thoughtful questions like people are so much more open to hearing your suggestions, rather than, you know, like if you came in and started accusing them. Of of... Like, “You did this wrong!”

PARVEEN:
Yeah, yeah.

ADRIANA:
Just coming in, come in and ask questions and just try to understand. And I think like that's so important.

PARVEEN:
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

ADRIANA:
Now, going back to the, the leadership thread, you know, you mentioned like it it can be really challenging. Like, in being in a leadership position, because you're, you're trying to influence the change. You're not necessarily in a position where you're doing the thing. You have to get people to do things for you, which can be really hard if if you're a very hands on person and, you know, super Type-A, likes to take things in their in their own hands. So, like, for you, how, is there anything, that you can draw from your past that prepared you for, for, for your current, experience and leadership?

PARVEEN:
Yeah. I again, going back to the consultancy experience. Right. So I when I, when we work, as a consultant, when we go on to the, client, it's always we, we have this in our head that. Okay, we are working. We are trying implementing new processes, or we are trying new, new ways to work. But I've. I used to always think that, I'm going to leave this, place, so I have to, write as much as I can. I have to share as much as I can, and I have to know. So it's more about, like, knowledge sharing all the time. And how do I make myself, like, you know, replaceable or redundant or how do you what do you call it as like. And for that you need, you just need to, create all like, you know, just keep sharing. So I used to do that, right? So that has kind of helped me in a way that, okay, there will be moments where you want to be like, oh, let me just do it by myself. Like, you know, let me just do it myself. It will be like, yeah, you know, and then I might it feels like, okay, it's more about like, how do you, how do you, coach others to do the same thing? How do you help them? How do you support them? Because it's not about, it's not about how faster can you get things done, right? It's it's about like, how do you create, many, leaders while you are working in a team? It's more about how do you, get many people, who can drive, who can, who can lead as well? It's more about that. So it's so if you keep doing, you keep getting into that zone of like, let me just get get it done, and then you will never be able to do. I think sometimes we go into that zone right. Like it feels like, oh yeah, me if I'm doing it might be faster, but then yeah, for now it might be faster. But then if that comes up in the same challenge or same problem you're trying to solve again, then you will be the only one who's going to solve it. If you're not, if you're not getting others to do that or like, you know, that's that's the thing, right? And again, I think that experience has helped me like, because as a consultant, I knew that I would I would leave this place. I would, and I'm coming here not to just solve the problem for them right now. And when I leave, they should be back in the same position. No. Right. So they have to continue with what we have implemented, they have to continue with what we have built. Otherwise then there's no point in this. If that was the case, then if that was the case and we would always be working, at one client forever, right? That not that's not the point. So you have to, create in, like, in such a way that even when you leave, those things continue. Not everything, but at least few basic things are continuing. So in that mindset, that approach is kind of helping me. And I'm like, the thing lately is really let me get it done.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. That's so clever. That's that's an excellent, excellent approach. And, you know, it's so funny because I think a lot, a lot of people here like, you know, when it comes to management to delegate, delegate, delegate. And it seems like such a simple like it's a simple piece of advice. It's so true. You absolutely have to do it. But it also means that you have to trust that your teammates will, you know, you have to trust them to do the thing. You can't. You basically can't be the helicopter parent around your teammates. Which can be really hard and sometimes. And I think it becomes especially hard if you have some people who need to be, as you said, coached, to do, to learn, to develop certain skills. So it's not just like learning how to do the thing, but also developing the skills, to be more, you know, like be more independent because like, yeah, it's really tough sometimes, like, I've had people work for me that they're just waiting for me to tell them what to do. And I'm like, I cannot just sit here and babysit you like, that is not your job to be babysat by me. And it's not my job to babysit you. Like, we, you know, like you need to be more independent. And it's really hard. Like, it's so easy when you have, like, the, the direct reports who are like, yep, I'm going to do all the things. And you're like, yeah, like my star child. Please do keep doing your awesome stuff. And but it's so hard when you have, the folks who are, you know, like, they need they need nudging. And there's like cases where, like, you can you can help them grow. And I think it's lovely when that happens. And then there are the cases where it's like, this is not a fit and you need to figure out how to deal with that as well. So stressful.

PARVEEN:
Absolutely. I think you'll get all the combinations. That idea like you get you get it like yeah you I think when you that's where like when you working I think not every like everybody's different. Everybody's skill set is different. And everybody's like their approach towards learning is different. Their approach towards career is different. So everybody is very different. And then when you get when you have to work with them, then you have to take different approaches when you're talking to them. And it's like you cannot really, you know, like I feel like you'll be surprised, like, you know, it's not about always like, you have to coach them, but sometimes it's more about, like giving them the problem so that they find the solution by themselves. So that independent might help them as well. So it's more about everybody having different needs. And how do we how do it. It takes a lot of time to understand who like whose whose working style is what and who like doing what. And for that, you need to, let them do let them see. I think that that takes a lot of time. Yes, I agree, like, you know, and then, then again, you'll end up having some people who really want to like. Yeah, as I said, babysit. Right. Like, who really want instruction. But then some people might be like, I don't need instruction, so you just give me the problem, I'll go and find the solution. And ideally so I think the different skill sets you'll get that different combination. And then maybe that's where when you're working in the company then you'll have different problems and you'll know, oh, this is the problem. So I feel like this person is really good fit to put that person in there. So I think, yeah, I think learning about the people learning about this style and you'll be surprised. I feel like many times like, you know, they they have already so much skill set that they might not even need coaching, but only just the direction and opportunities that they can grow.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, absolutely. And to feel to feel acknowledged and listened because I think, yeah, it's funny because you don't want like the micromanaging manager.

PARVEEN:
Yeah.

ADRIANA:
You also don't want the manager who's like, so hands off. You're like, please pay attention to me. Please love me. Because then that can be motivating as well, right? Because you're like, well, what am I doing this for, then?

PARVEEN:
You know. Yeah, yeah. And then that's that reminds me like yeah. And also feedback. Right. Like feedback. I'm a very feedback, person. And I think that's where like giving feedback asking for feedback. I mean, again, if you feel myself like asking what I think if people like, you're giving them feedback. And when I say feedback, it's not about just saying improve things, but it's more about whenever they have done some amazing work. Praise in public, like, you know, yeah, that motivates that motivate forward. That yeah, these few things, I think, I'm getting into these things of like, okay, I'm a person. I like taking feedback. I like asking feedback, but not everyone could be the same. So, it's about building that contract. Like, I've learned this, recently in one of the workshop that I attended about leadership is about, like you sitting and talking to each other and building that contract of like, okay, yeah, what do you expect from me? And what, like, and what do I expect from them? And how do you like communicating and like, how do you like taking feedback? How do you want me to do like, you know, it's all about that setting that boundaries and setting that, relationship contract so that it works both ways because then it doesn't become like the expectations are different then. Then that will create a lot of misunderstand. And then. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, I that's, that's so clever having this concept of a, of a contract and that basically every, every person that you're working with will will have like a different contract because of. Yeah, different what they work with. Yeah. But yeah, that is such a, such a clever idea. And, you know, I think you mentioned also like you've, you've done some, like leadership workshops and I think that's so important as well, like, in, in one of my early, leadership roles, I got sent to, like, leadership training, and it was definitely like, it was really valuable. At first I'm like, oh, what do I need new leadership training for? But it's like, it's really valuable. They teach you like important things. Like they make you aware of things that you weren't necessarily aware of. Like, I remember we had to do like role playing on like having difficult conversations. And it's it's so hard and you have to like broach it in a way that you don't end up like hurting someone's feelings because like, ultimately, like having a difficult conversation can lead to hurt feelings, especially if the the other person's like thinking that they're doing fine and you're like, yeah.

ADRIANA:
You're not. You know, how do you communicate that effectively so that you see their perspective and vice versa?

PARVEEN:
No, absolutely. I think, I think I've, I've really learned that there's no one book or there's, there's no like one way or the other way to do leadership. It's like you have your own style. You have your own like, way like leadership, is all about like, you know, how how do you want to drive people like, you know, how do you want to how what is your style? You know, there's I feel like all these workshops help, to like, you know, like, see different perspective to learn how others think and the like again. Then just like how we mentioned. Right, like learning about conflict resolutions or learning about feedback, giving or learning about how do you delegates like all this stuff? Like, you know, and these are all it's more it's more like all load of different ingredients that you mix. It becomes its own flavor. Right? You know, whatever you mix, that's your flavor. So leadership is more I feel like, you know, personally, like in my experience, I feel like everyone has their own style, the way they own approach. There's no one way or the other way, and there's no there's no guideline or book that this is this is leadership. And everyone has to do this way. So it's more about how do you find your balance or how do you want to drive. It's more about your own style, like because people are like different different like, you know, that's what like, you know, there are introverted people, there are extroverted people. Everyone has their own personalities. And then how do they bring their authentic self into this leadership? And how do they build that and how do they help? Companies and the people I think that's that's really, a completely different way of doing it.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah. And I I'm, I want to dig into that a little bit more where you mentioned like bringing your authentic self, to work because I think like as, you know, in, in a leadership position, I think it is, you know, the responsibility of the leader to create a safe work space, for, for employees, and you know, where you can. And there's nothing worse than not being able to bring your authentic self, to work. Because you you're just not going to get everything out of, you know, the people working with you. Right? Because they're not going to they're not going to feel like they, they can, you know, bring 100% like, put 100% of themselves into the work.

PARVEEN:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I think yeah. It's just being you. Right? Your authentic self is like you being yourself, whether you are an introverted person, whether you are an extroverted person, it's you. It's your personality. I'm a very introverted person, by the way. So it's more about like you just being yourself and because how long? Like if you're trying to be someone else, I think it will drain. Like it will drain you completely. If you, if you're a person who, who is not comfortable doing certain things, it's fine. Finally, you know, there's just accept it. Everyone has their own different strengths and, different weakness, right? Like, yeah, I it's hard to say. I know, like, you know, you go through those imposter syndrome where you kind of go through in the weakness points always not the strengths, but trying the best. Right? Like, you know, I think I was. I was writing this, in my own reflection blog recently, like, where I write every year. Right. I was saying that how useful my own brag document was last year whenever I was going through these moments of like, okay, no, I'm fine, you know, it's just, yeah, it's yeah, I know I went on to that, but I think it's just being yourself, no matter what kind of personality you have, I think that kind of helps. And then. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
And what have you done, like with your own team in terms of helping them, giving them that safe space and allowing them to be their authentic selves?

PARVEEN:
Yeah, I, I hope my yeah, they, they see this, but I think, I try myself is like, try to listen to them the first thing like, like not to judge what they're saying is just to make sure that they feel that I'm not judging what they're saying. And listening is the first thing I would say, like, you know, I would listen to them and acknowledge the feelings like, okay, if they're feeling that way, it's so, so it's it's creating that space of like, you can come to me, you can reach me out and you can talk to me and you can share if whether it's like a thing about the ideas or whether you're feeling frustrated about certain things that are not working in a certain way, like being approachable, like me, being approachable is one of the way. And I think that takes a little like a lot of time, for like, people to understand that I'm approachable. Right. So I think it to like creating many instances where you have given that example that people can reach you, that you're approachable and then they can talk to you. So I think that, think that's one way, and like for me, really, I would say like never counting, like pointing out a failure maybe, or like. Yeah, yeah, it's. Not a failure, but it's about like the learnings, like, you know.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

PARVEEN:
Something is not working this way. Like, how do we improve? What do we do? So it's about having those kind of conversations and motivating and supporting, making sure that they feel that, like they are supported enough no matter how and what they do. Is one of the. Yeah, these are the few ways of I try.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, I think you nailed it because like, you know, like two really important points. You made was being approachable. And I think that's so important. I remember, like the last time I managed, like, it took a while to kind of build up that rapport with, with, my direct reports, because if you like, how can can I be myself? So like, try to, like, be relaxed, you know, like be relaxed around them so that they feel relaxed around me and hopefully like, hopefully that that puts them at ease. And I think as you said, being approachable is so, so important. Yeah. That's great. I want to also, just quickly, talk a little bit about, you know, like your, your role, because you said, like, you're, you're doing work around, like, setting, like QA, like quality strategy. Right. So then it's another aspect of leadership where it's not just like you're not just leading, like you're not just managing your team, but you're also like influencing an entire organization. And how has that been?

PARVEEN:
Yeah. It's been great. It's been good. It's been great, actually, because, I think sometimes you need people who actually believe in quality to be able to do these things. So, I'm glad, like, everybody here, I work, everybody's like, what can we do to like you know, the quality is one of the topic that is most spoken as well. So I think that's, that's I like I feel like that's the that's half of the battle is one kind of feeling. And then it becomes more like, okay, now how do you break down into smaller things of like, how do you different things? So this is where I try to like not just focus on one thing, like, like I tried like, okay, talking about how can we, maybe do some experimentation or any kind of new, ways of approaching things, but, talking in a different way, like bring. I've also tried to create a not tried, but I've created a community for community so that, it's about giving the same talking about the same thing in a different, forums in a different way, so that, people can understand it. And it's, it also means that it's not only me talking about, quality. And in this it's the way I'm talking about, but it's more about how thought leaders outside are also, like, you know, it's the same approach. So bringing so doing those sessions, bringing that has helped us, a lot like bringing people from, you know, speakers and bringing them in and, letting them do the sessions really more relevant to what we are trying at a company. And, it kind of like it's, it's more about, again, it goes back to how do you advocate how do you talk about quality, how do you push, like in anything and everything that you do, where it is needed? And how do you keep talking about it in the right place, in the right time with the right people, and then show the changes? And it doesn't have to be very big ones, like, you know, if you have like small changes, small step every time. And once people see that, it is working for them, it is helping them. Then they will then follow that like, you know, so I think that's that's how, that's how I've been like, you know, like it's not Big Bang all at once. Let's do everything at once. It's and and it's been more about nothing to do with more innovative tools or anything like it's all about sometimes, like, it's all about, going back to the basics and, going, like, doing fundamental things help speed up. So I think I'm still like, it's, it's there's a lot to do here. Yeah. But I think it's been, it's been good. It's been good in the sense of like trying small steps over time and doing little things changes at a time. And sometimes when, things keep fast moving, then, there are challenges we have to based on the context of which, initiatives we are working on, we just have to, change our approach in certain ways. So it's more it's it's been it's been adaptable. So adaptability is another thing. Right? So it's more about, trying to take small steps and adapting to what you're doing and, showing people examples and then bringing people in. So there are multiple ways of doing, and talking about it in a different way. I think that's, that's how I've been doing here.

ADRIANA:
That's awesome. And quick follow up question. Have you has has Observability and quality entered into the conversation?

PARVEEN:
Of course. Yes. I mean, it's, I, I do talk about this in the sense is like when we talk about quality, right? Like, especially cross functional requirements is where this Observability comes in, and it's even like how it's more and more relevant, even when you actually working with, systems with so much backend, it's more backend focused. So it becomes even more the more back-end focus it is, the more visibility you need it. Right. And that's where Observability comes in. So I think it's I still like yeah. That's, that's, that's a topic I think. And I, and I do encourage people like, you know, it's not about just... same message again. It's nothing new message. But still I think it still applies the same message that it's not about just implementing the logs It's about testing them, seeing if they are meaningful. How do you check that? Because it's more easier to shift this to the left then to release it and then realize, oh, we need some more logs and go back and add more. So it's it's much, much more harder. Then it's much more easier to spend some time to do implement it and do the testing. And, you know, so these simple things I still talk about this. Yes.

ADRIANA:
Amazing. Yeah. And I this is like so great. It's such a great way of looking at it like, it. Is your instrumentation meaningful because, you know, it's it's such an easy trap to fall into where it's like, well, we're instrumenting our code. Okay. That's awesome. But if you're hitting a bunch of crap, that makes no sense.

PARVEEN:
Yeah. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
Like, it's not useful to you for troubleshooting, then what's the point?

PARVEEN:
Yes. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
Well, we're coming up on time. But before we wrap up, I was wondering if you have any parting words of wisdom that you would like to share with our audience.

PARVEEN:
Not wisdom, but it's like. Yeah, it's more like, I would say 2025. I feel like this is a this is my first 2025 podcast. It's more like, yeah, this year for me, myself is more about like, you know, how do you, be yourself, be open to your, like, you know, keep your mind open to learning, no matter at what stage or what level you are on, and be open to ask those questions in any forum. And, like, yeah, learning is constant. Like, you know, it's it's a continuous process and keep being consistent is another word that I'm trying to stick to this year. We'll see. So yeah, doing anything consistently, like sticking when I say consistently doesn't mean that you have to do it every day. But you know, when you when you do something consistently, it has a compound effect that will, that you will see later on. So for that to happen you need to do that consistently. So this is for my own self like, you know, more than for others.

I think this with my own self. So because I've, I'm saying this to myself that yes, we have to like, doing this consistently, and learning and asking for help is what I would say. And again, networking as well. Build your network like, you know, to learn learn from others like, you know, build that network where you can learn from each other and you can share with each other and, you can uplift each other as well, you know, like you need that you need that motivation. So if someone else is uplifting you, well, like I would be like, you know, that would go in my brag document and I would see that and I would feel so fulfilled. So little things help. So these these would be my few things that I would share.

ADRIANA:
I love this so much. Thank you. These are great parting words of wisdom. Well, thank you so much Parveen for geeking out with me today. Y'all don't forget to subscribe and be sure to check the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media. Until next time...

PARVEEN:
Peace out and geek out. It was amazing!

ADRIANA:
Geeking out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Villela. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking out is also produced by my daughter Hannah Maxwell, who incidentally design all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the socials by going to bento.me/geekingout

The One Where We Geek Out on Community with Taylor Dolezal

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Adriana Villela, Hannah Maxwell, Taylor Dolezal) — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 04:00:00 +0000

About our guest:

Taylor Dolezal navigates the cloud native universe with a knack for puns and a keen eye for psychology. Living in the heart of LA, he blends tech innovation with mental insights, one punny cloud at a time. Avid reader, thinker, and cloud whisperer.

Find our guest on:

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show notes:

Transcript:
ADRIANA:
Hey, fellow geeks. Welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And geeking out with me today, I have a very special guest, Taylor Dolezal of the CNCF. Welcome, Taylor.

TAYLOR:
Yo. Howdy, howdy, howdy. Excited to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, thanks for jumping on the podcast. And as we're recording this, you're in the midst of some really nasty wildfires in the LA area.

TAYLOR:
Yes. Oh, my gosh. It's been, literally a wild ride all around the city. But, thankfully, this this house where I'm at, everything's okay. Just a lot of ash, dust, debris, really uplifting to see the community rally with one another, to, on everything. Despite, you know, some people have lost homes. There's been some really challenging, really sad things that have happened. But seeing everybody jump in and want to help one another out, truly beautiful, seeing seeing everybody get so involved. There have been there have been things like the Comedy Store here, a big, like, world famous comedy place. They're having free shows and raising money. So like, things that I never would have expected Los Angeles to do, really, going forth and doing. It's beautiful. I love seeing that.

ADRIANA:
Oh, my God, that's so nice. And especially, you know, in the midst of all of the I don't know, there's just so, so much negativity in the world. It's so nice to just see, like a bright spot in the midst of this tragedy too. So yay, yay, humanity.

TAYLOR:
Like the sun. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Awesome. Okay. Well, I, I do want to dig into that topic a little bit more, but before we get, going to that, I am going to subject you to my icebreaker questions. All right, here we go. Are you ready? All right, first question. Are you a lefty or a righty?

TAYLOR:
Righty.

ADRIANA:
All right. Next question. Do you prefer iPhone or Android?

TAYLOR:
iPhone since 20--... 2009

TAYLOR:
Fun fact, I had a, black. I was one of the people that got the BlackBerry Storm with the one, like, way back in the day. I'm like trackball. No, thanks. Yeah. The price of adoption there. Not. Not a good one. I think all of those phones v1 ended up being returned, by the way. Fun fact, but uh...

ADRIANA:
Damn. Yeah, I, I heard they were, quite glitchy. I had, I had a pre-Storm BlackBerry. I think I had a BlackBerry Curve. And then it started, shutting down, spontaneously in the middle of calls, and I'm like, screw this. I'm going to. This is when I switched iPhone.

TAYLOR:
I, I was surprised to find when I worked at Disney later on, like 2016 to 2020, they had a RIM server there and they were supporting that. So there were still vestiges of BlackBerry around there.

ADRIANA:
Damn! What? That’s wild. Wow. The things that are still around, that's bananas. All right. Next question. Do you prefer Mac, Linux or Windows?

TAYLOR:
I'd say ooh, that's a tough one. I'd say I'd say it's like, yeah, I'm 55% Mac. I really like Linux and stuff like that. I do want to it's is 2025 the year of Linux on the desktop. You know, it's. I need to find that out for every year. I think we'll get there someday. But, George Castro, one of my coworkers, and Bob and GC have me contemplating moving to a framework laptop or something like that. So we'll see. But Mac, for right now, but Linux is looking pretty good.

ADRIANA:
I feel one day we'll get there with Linux. I had a Linux dedicated Linux desktop back in the day. But I had to dual boot it with Windows or at one point I had a of Windows VM. And because I couldn't, I couldn't sync my BlackBerry and then subsequently my iPhone to, to Linux. So like bye!

TAYLOR:
It's, I mean, it's really the ecosystem much like CNCF Haha. You know, but it's, it's, it's that. What's the interoperability look like. That's like I can do something on Linux, but will my Zoom program work tomorrow? I don’t know... You know, so.. Stuff like that.

ADRIANA:
Yeah I feel yeah. Okay. Next question. Do you have a favorite programing language?

TAYLOR:
I do, you know, it's I love all of my, languages just the same.

ADRIANA:
All your babies. Okay.

TAYLOR:
Which dog is your favorite? I don't have a favorite. I... Right now, I'm really deep into, what, like, early days. So I’ll give you a quick run, I promise. VB6, .Net, Visual Basic, then C-sharp, and then PHP, Ruby. And so I was moving through those, Python’s come up a bit. Not really my favorite, especially with PEP8 and the indentation stuff. So I love looking at a language and being able to, like, read it, really be able to grok, understand it. Go has been there for a while for me, but I lately have been taking a look at, Rust a little bit. The one that I keep I can't get away from for the past ten years is Elixir. Taking a look at that functional programing, I think that, you know, not trying to make such a thing, but I think that there's a lot there that we haven't tapped into yet. I see a lot of other people looking at Zig and these other things too, but I don't know. Everybody take a look at Elixir. It's a full stack. You get live updates and stuff like that. You don't to jump between back end and front end and JavaScript, it's you stay in the same language. Used in telco. And then just I like I like how stable that it is, despite how the world might not be. So.

ADRIANA:
That’s awesome.

TAYLOR:
That's fun.

ADRIANA:
And fun fact there's, OTel instrumentation for Elixir.

TAYLOR:
I was so excited to, like, see.

ADRIANA:
That's cool.

TAYLOR:
Difficult kind of thinking about your program as a flipbook rather than I just dot color. What are you. You know.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah. Oh, by the way, you mentioned VB6. Nostalgia like that was my which I used in high school.

TAYLOR:
Did I start to date myself. Yeah. Oh yeah. Fax machines, VHS. Oh no.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. There's a, there's a very special place in my heart for VB6

ADRIANA:
I kind miss it. It wasn't, it wasn't bad. Cool. Okay. Next question. Do you prefer dev or ops?

TAYLOR:
Oof! I, yeah. Can I split the difference? I'd say. I think that. It's. It really depends on the day. I'm. It's not a cop out answer. I really I love distributed systems and just like, wow. Beautiful. Like what we've been able to put together, but, No. Yeah, I'd say no. I'd have to lean a little bit more towards ops. Dev is fun when accomplishing that task, but I love seeing it all composed and tied together.

ADRIANA:
Yes, I definitely feel ya. There's it's very satisfying. Okay. Next one I may maybe I know what your answer is based on previous comment. Do you prefer JSON or YAML?

TAYLOR:
I think yeah, I know, I just might come as a shock. I'm a big I like JSON. That makes a lot more sense to me. YAML is great, but again, same kind of,

ADRIANA:
You mentioned the spaces. The indentation. Yeah.

TAYLOR:
And in most parsers and stuff like that, you can go back and forth from JSON to YAML, which is, very helpful tip like JSON can be converted very quickly to YAML and back and forth, but but yeah, for yeah, my CNCF hat on, YAML, of course. But I guess not at home.

ADRIANA:
But also some like fun fact that, you know, like, I don't think most people realize also that you can write Kubernetes manifest in JSON. We just. Yeah, we default to YAML.

TAYLOR:
Exactly. It's like that's I think that what's what's the biggest secret that you that no one knows that you do. That's one of the ones I would say 100%.

ADRIANA:
Awesome. Okay. Next question. Do you prefer spaces or tabs?

TAYLOR:
Tabs 100%. We started we spun up the end user TAB. I thought that was enough of a sign to people. Give them their space to do great things.

ADRIANA:
I love it. Two more questions. Do you prefer to consume content through text or video?

TAYLOR:
I'd say I, it's hard to be sitting on the couch during a cloudy day. Pretty rare here in Los Angeles. And then just, like, pour through RSS feeds and stuff like that. I love reading and that kind of clarity when it's something I don't understand. And I really want that, like deep aspect or like, please just explain it to me. You know, it's sitting down with a friend or video that's the best way to emulate that.

ADRIANA:
Yes. Oh, I like sitting down with a friend. Yeah, nothing beats that. Sometimes we forget to ask. I don't know, I get like, so caught up in my own problem solving. Like, I must figure this out myself. And then it's like, but. Or I could ask, you know, my friend here who's an expert in this area.

TAYLOR:
It's my favorite being able to sit down. It's I really love and respect to all the friends and people in the ecosystem that take the time and have the patience to sit down with me. I sometimes I feel bad because I'll treat them kind of like the I'll have immediate hot takes. I'll be like, why is it like that? You know? And then they're,

ADRIANA:
I love it. Okay. Final question. What is your superpower?

TAYLOR:
Superpower? I'd say it's, I'd say I'd say sleep, question mark. When something is really interesting, it's at it. I'm sure a lot of people can relate. It's just that really takes the precipice and the focus. And yes, I think KubeCon, very rarely and not like, hey, this is a it's not a badge. It's not good to not get it. Don't do it. It hurts your brain. But it's just very difficult to manage or kind of understand or figure out the balance when something is so exciting as all of our community all together in the same place all at once, there's a lot of when there's cool ideas afoot and lurking around, it's really hard to focus on much else and to lower the excitement for like, hey, okay, body, it's time to sleep. So I've had to learn a couple of tricks on that one to actually get me to a place where I can get the rest I need, but. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's. I think it's the energy. I don't know where it comes from. I don't know if I'm solar powered or what, or.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, I love it.

TAYLOR:
But I'll let you know when I figure it out.

ADRIANA:
That's so great. And I think this is a great segue into, into our conversation. There's so many topics that I want to dig into. But first and foremost, KubeCon EU is right around the corner at the time that we're recording this, taking place in London. And as you said, it's like so much, so much excitement. Like, I, I attended my first KubeCon in Detroit in 2022 and oh my God, I was like, it was so overwhelming. And so whenever like new, new to KubeCon people, you know, come in. I'm like, don't worry. Just like, it'll be intense. Hey, there's a lot of stuff going on. Just find an area where you feel comfortable.

TAYLOR:
Marathon, not a sprint. All the pressure makes diamonds, as Chris Anuzchec will say.

ADRIANA:
And KubeCon is almost a is is always so much fun too, because it's got like such rock concert vibes, especially on the opening day keynote. Like it's usually like this massive, massive, you know, room or multiple rooms have been like, you know, combined. And like, yeah, it's just such a such a fun production. And, is there anything that you're looking forward to in, in this upcoming KubeCon?

TAYLOR:
I think, honestly, I'm really curious about the stories that are I has kind of been big fascinating. And then, oh, my gosh, I don't want to hear it anymore. You know, we're still kind of figuring out that space. And it's definitely going through the okay, I've heard enough like snooze a little bit, framing. And so I think there's some cool things that people are doing that are amazing on the end user side. I'm kind of curious on those stories, but at the same time with, I kind of blossom. It's like a fast growing tree. And. Yeah, the, the leaf cover, has kind of shaded out a lot of the other really interesting things that have been happening in the background that haven't gotten the spotlight or the attention. And so there is still the your ever popular and present platform engineering and security. That's kind of like the AI is, you know, more or less intentionally being left off. But you'll see it that you won't know it, but you'll see signs, you know, around the periphery. But, I think that's I'm really curious to hear more about this adoption stories. I anecdotally, I think that there's a lot of people working on developer experiential type things. Yeah. And especially with Claude Lemon assisted coding, all these things, it's really I see people starting to appreciate or comment on or have hot takes about. This is a bummer experience. I don't like this UX or this UI. So you have with problems come people ideating on solutions. Awesome things coming out and some not so much. And but that's where I like that momentum. So I think that there's a I'm curious to see how many people are going to focus on that topic specifically. Most of our end user technical advisory board has, has focused on that too. And you'll kind of hear pieces and parts of it as well. I think, Arun Gupta, our CNCF governing board chairperson, was talking, I think Bart, from the community asked him. He's like, what's your least favorite feature about Kubernetes? And it was, the onramp, which I would say. I would debate. I'm like, well, that's. Not a feature of Kubernetes. Yeah. And, But I didn't give him a hard time on that one. But I think that I hear him on that one. And it's like when you bring something to Kubernetes, it's there's there's that pain of understanding and what makes sense, having a great developer experience. Docker did this amazingly, Heroku with their CLI. Amazing. So being more thoughtful in asking the question, why is this so difficult to do? Or can we make this better, seeing that come up more often? I'm really excited for that. I know that's what I was supposed to fix, but, well, yeah, we'll we'll get there someday.

ADRIANA:
Absolutely. And, you know, I infer I was thinking like, another interesting topic, which I think fits into I guess what we are, what folks are experiencing in LA, related to the wildfires, the environment and technology. And I don't know. I don't know if you feel this way, but as a, as a techie, I, you know, like, I've always, like, really, really cared about the environment. And yet I work in a field that contributes to the production of greenhouse gases. And it like, it breaks my heart. But at the same time, like, it's, it's been interesting to see, some of the projects that have, sprouted, to, you know, encourage greener, greener software deployment, and greener development. I was just wondering if you, had any thoughts around that.

TAYLOR:
I think it's, it very, very nuanced thoughts on that front. I, I, I'm like you, you know, I'm like, I think about that all the time. Like, I know my name is Taylor, but I might not be Taylor Swift with my private jet, you know, that many emissions. But, you know, everything is checks and balances on that front. Yeah. So even thinking down to, you know, like, I've got some that sparkling water here was that made here? It was. It shipped across the country. Was it really efficient? You know, thinking about things like that, actually doing it and living something that is, taking into account all these things can be difficult. It's the reverse of that UX experience. Right. And a lot of people will succumb to that friction. It's just like, it's just really harder. I, I'd love to buy local, but this is going to be here tomorrow. You know, when you're down in the reality, things might shift or change. But I don't think that that should be something that dissuades people from doing the right thing. Atomic. I think it's atomic habits. One of the, And not to show that book, but it's really good. I, I had feelings about it before I read it, and after that I was like, ooh, this is great. The author made the point that, do you need to get 100% in every test? No. If you're 80 is okay, 91 is okay, 92 is okay. If you're making progress towards something, it's okay to have a little bit of, you know, don't don't be so, so difficult on yourself, especially if you want to build the habit or the pattern. When we're taking a look at things within the, it being kind to the environment and making, figuring out that impact to, I've seen a lot of groups that have the right intent and focus, but, unfortunately, it's really difficult to sell that. Right? We all know what the right thing to do is, but how do how do we make meaningful progress on that? Can we show a return on investment there for business or people that might want to sponsor these things? Not because it should make money. And yes, it's the right thing to do, but how do we continue making that forward? We can't drive around our, you know, we can't run around with our phone battery, you know, until it just depletes. We need to figure out some way to refill that make make the effort sustainable itself. So yeah, that's and that's the hard that's the hard thing. Right. Is trying to figure that out. But, yeah, I've seen a lot of people do amazing things, whether it's like, hey, this project, you know, it. Even things like looking at projects around the CNCF ecosystem, hey, do we really need this much compute? Well, it runs faster. Is that a good enough reason? All right. Can you deal with. Can you wait, you know, an hour more or two or. This is just a lot more efficient. Looking at projects actually measure power consumption or usage, being more mindful about like, again, do you need that matrix build or, or would one thing make sense or can we use one runtime really creative ways to solve technical problems so we aren't burning up enough. Yeah. But it's also two pronged as well. Right. It's use less energy or be less impactful in some areas and then generate more in others. And it's going to be that blend in that fusion. Yeah. Yeah. Again, lots of great things to talk about on that front. But I think at the end of the day, really what it comes down to is taking action, take meaningful action. We could talk about it all day, but let's let's get down to brass tacks and try to figure out how to how to make that impact, how to create projects like open cost and other things show savings and other benefits. There be, you know, less power means less power, bill. So yeah, you can figure out strategic ways to convince and talk to our business leaders and executives and showcase that, like, hey, let me make it easy for you to make the right decision. Then you're really compelling.

ADRIANA:
Exactly. Yeah, it's it's all about talking about those dollars and cents right? At the end of the day. I mean, that's that's always what gets people's attention.

TAYLOR:
If you make cents you might get dollars too.

ADRIANA:
Womp womp. And the other thing, you know, you talked about also like forging habits, like, you know, we in tech we got we got used to like, developing that agile mindset, that DevOps mindset. Why not develop that green, development mindset and, and the other the other thing that someone pointed out to me that was quite interesting because we we talk about a lot about like, you know, having greener, greener infrastructure or, greener deployment processes. But then there's also, the other side, which is making our software greener, choosing more efficient algorithms, choosing more efficient languages. I know that there's like some languages that are less efficient than others, like some runtimes are really like your beefy and stuff. These are things that like, we don't necessarily think about. Right. We've been just sort of taking this for granted, for a while.

TAYLOR:
It's that I find really fascinating and I think that, like, that's a great, you know, not that chipmakers need more to focus on right now, given given the state of everything, but, I think that it's, Yeah, it just it makes sense for I've seen even, like, system on a chip or chips themselves. They're like, this is tuned for this language. This operates this much better. Seeing some things like TPUs and other stuff as well. It's like, no, this can actually change. It's much more efficient. I find that fascinating. And I think that the New Relic and Datadog and others had I think it was more coming out of the New Relic camp because they were, you know, first, first in the scene with telemetry and some things, you know, in the in the early days, at least for me in my career and what they saw and they talked to in many of their cases was the fact that, developers didn't care about the things that they weren't able to see or measure. And that makes complete sense. Again, kind of within the habits thing. If I don't have a way to measure what I'm doing, using or impacting AI, it's really hard for me to make a change. I would I would love to right now be able to tell you what each device in my house pulls and uses in terms of wattage or anything else. Thankfully, data centers are a little bit better instrumented than that, but that's still can be difficult. Is this app consuming more power or not? Did it get shifted to some commodity hardware thing that's actually pulling more? Can we you know, it's there's a lot of ADRIANA: s still within the space. I think again, that's where I'd love to see more action. You know, in us to band together to think about is can we figure out measuring power or stuff like that, even for our homes and other things? Yeah, maybe it's a little bit better in Canada, but I've got to go around to I still have to go outside, go around, look at my box, measure it. Market.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Yeah, we we still have a lot to. Yeah. It's wild, it's wild. Why why does it require that?

TAYLOR:
It's. And I think that it's in it's I would encourage more people to ask questions like that too, because that's where it starts, right? It's like, why not? Why is this a bummer? That's where the conversation starts. And I and I love that. And then we can start to build some things on that front, even if it's just a millimeter forward. That's further than we were yesterday. So really encourage people on that front.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, I love that. And the the other thing that I want to talk about on, on that similar, thread of, of environmental sustainability is, you know, AI as you mentioned earlier, that is like not just is such a power hog. And yet it's a little contradictory to because, I can help us potentially to tune our systems as well. So finding that finding that balance. Right.

TAYLOR:
It's I think with that too, it's the when you think about development, whether or just operational work too. Right. It's like, let's make this work first. Right. It's like learning a new meal or something that you're cooking, too. It's like, let me just see if putting these things together works. And it's like, do you like it? More salt? That's all. It's an iterative process. And that's the same thing. I think with any development or new paradigm shift like this is like, is it good? And then we figure out yes or no? Then comes the that should never keep scaling up. It should. It won't take you 50 minutes to make that meal again. You get better and better and better and it takes less, less, less. You can start to eyeball the ingredients. You get more familiar with it. Yeah, that's what I would reason is, should happen in a healthy kind of ecosystem or network effect or new paradigm shift. We can't no way. We should continue to just like, yep, just keep burning things until the ocean's boiling. It's like, no, no, no no no no no. And I find it kind of sad where you do have, you do see deals and things like that, where a lot of people have already signed contracts for computing these other things. And there's not truth. Truthfully, there's not a lot of people that have had the time and experience and they're like experts within creating these brag applications or AI based applications.

So unfortunately, a lot of these GPUs are just sitting there. Many of them turned on, just burning and chilling. They're not, you know, in standby mode. That was the money that was paid for them. So, yeah, again, I think being more intentional about, like, having something at the right time, if you can try to as much as in your life, are these open source efforts or elsewhere lazy, load them in, try not to pull things down until you need them. That's why I don't have eight different cans of, water around my desk right now.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, it's it's akin to, like, you know, you know, leaving leaving a room. Turn the lights off. If you're if you're not using it or like, you've got a power bar, but nothing, all the things that are plugged into it are not being in, not in use. While that power bar consumes some power as well, just from being on, even if the other things aren't on. So turn that off.

TAYLOR:
You don't leave your stereo on like max volume when you leave the house. It’s like, all right, house, enjoy the tunes you know.

ADRIANA:
Exactly, exactly. And this is our actually reminds me to like, you know, my my husband is, like, into home automation, so he, like, automated all the things during lockdown. And this is, this is actually a great example of, like, home automation, where home automation can be your friend. Right? Because, you know, you can you can have, you can have a certain lights come on at certain times. Or if you, my favorite is if you forget to, like, leave, if you leave a light on accidentally, you've left the house. You you can see that on your phone. And you can toggle that switch from your phone, which is, like, amazing, right? Having these, you know, these little convenience things that also help out in the end.

TAYLOR:
I love that. I've got a, Google Nest. I'm also big on home automation to and, like I, I used to have the nice, like, drive up and the lights will fade on and, you know, it's like, very immersive, the triggers and things like that that happen with my house. But, I've since moved. I have been here for three years, but I need to maybe, maybe spend a weekend or two sticking to that. But but I do have like a Google Nest. And I love that because I'll go and I'll travel and things like that from time to time. And, it's nice to be able to have that at least switch to idle or eco mode when I'm out. Google Nest will at least, and many others I believe will actually connect, at least in LA there's like surge times. And so to reduce the load on the electrical grid, it'll actually say like, okay, you can survive with like, let me turn it up to maybe like 76 or 77°F or.

Or you know, I won't turn on heating until this time and it will, really help out. Yeah. I, I haven't seen anything like that. Suggested, attempted tried. But maybe that's something that, you know, I'm curious to see what the community thinks on that one. Yeah, we do that and subscribe to that in a data center or like, hey, this region or even shifting data centers when, when something is, you know, you don't need to pay shipping costs for for your applications. Thankfully just need to pull down from a registry or something might make sense to run in a, specific data center at a certain time. You know, it's things like that where you could start asking the what if or why or maybe questions where that would start having those impacts.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. It's it's all about being curious. Right.

TAYLOR:
Yeah. And everyone has infinite time. So. I get you can’t explore everything. But, but that's. That's why such a broad community is awesome. Yeah. You know, appeal to some people, not to others. And so people can run off and check these things out again, I think that that curiosity is so critical, again, urging people I know, it's like I, I fall prey to this too, but it's so fun to talk about. But we really need help making these things happen. No one's going to go do it, you know? And unless we actually go do it.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah, it's true. And that's why, you know, I think events like KubeCon can be great for that. Because, you know, it's a it's a meeting of the minds. People are like, so jazzed up. You get the adrenaline rush, the dopamine rush. And people get excited. It helps the hype people up about topics. And I mean, I've, I've come back from so many KubeCon like, oh my God, I got to try this out now, right? Here's something cool. Someone's presented on an interesting topic. And I love that that power of the community. I also want to give a plug to Open Source Summit, as well, because it's, I like into it, liken it to like a KubeCon Lite you know, the same awesomeness of KubeCon without the overwhelm. Yeah, it's always so much fun.

TAYLOR:
It's I like those and I like the, there's a couple for folks that are like, CNCF is is underneath the Linux Foundation. It’s a sub foundation. If you think of, Open Source Summit, Linux Foundation event, there's also one for LF members called LF Member Summit. That's like an Open Source Summit lite. And so that's like 100, 200 people even less. And I like that level of I like the different tiers of events, like that, because there are some where you like, really want to dive deep with somebody and get strategic. And then KubeCon where you're like, oh, you just kind of, you know, cherry pick or run around the candy, the, the technical candy store, like a little bit of that. Talk to them, go here, do that. Get that swag.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And you know, it just speaks to the power of community. Like I got involved, with the CNCF, like, actually, when I took my first DevRel job, almost three years ago, in, in OpenTelemetry and, like, you know, this was my first personal experience in contributing to open source and, like, I'm so lucky that the OpenTelemetry community is, like, such a kind, thoughtful community where I've I've said this many, many times and I'll say it again, you know, like I said that in my first PR with like, deep trepidation and, and even though, you know, people had comments, of course, they're they want to help you improve. But it was like, I want to help you improve. I'm not here to bite your head off. Not like you see with, you know, some very traumatic StackOverflow posts where you're asking a question and someone's like.

TAYLOR:
Oh my gosh, you're.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Everyone, everyone has been so nice. Like, I'll, I'll post questions on the various OTel, channels on CNCF slack. And like, people take the time to answer the questions, you know, like, I really, really appreciate that.

TAYLOR:
It's it's, I think that you're capturing something that is really interesting to me, too. I really like the psychology aspect of that as well. I'm not a psych major. You know, I'm psyched about psychology, but I don't have a major in that. But, it's some of the books behind me, like, Carl Jung and stuff like that. Very fascinating. Especially when it comes down to that, that feedback and figuring out the best way to share that, early, like Linux days. I think there was a joke, like you had said on Reddit where to get a response from early days community, it was you had to insult it. Almost like. Linux is dumb. Because I can't set up Wi-Fi. Then you would have tons of well, no, you know, it's like the well, actually crowd comes to actually to well actually you and show you. Have and that's, that's that's helpful.

At least back then. Now it's completely different and it's this like, hey, what do you think about this? And I feel like we've gotten far further away, you know, hopefully that with that kind of feedback in people. But yeah. Nothing. No, no community is perfect. Very aware of that. But I think that it's, it's interesting to see how we keep changing and rethinking how, how meaningful we can be to one another and figure out how to actually help you or, I, I've loved working at companies that have documents that are like, here's how to best work with me. You know, like, I wake up early, I like coffee over tea, some of the some of the icebreakers that you've had too. What's your human README look like? It's I laugh, I think.

ADRIANA:
Oh my God, that's so great. I hadn't heard of that before, but that is so perfect. The human README. That's great.

TAYLOR:
I don't know what my license is. Hopefully Apache. I think.

ADRIANA:
You know, I wanted to ask you because you you're you're with the CNCF. How long have you been with the CNCF? And, how how much change have you seen in the time that you've you've been with the CNCF.

TAYLOR:
So, so much. It's been just about just shy of three years now. Yeah. It's been really fascinating to me. I remember coming in and this was like post Covid and, yeah, Post Malone and, and we got to see everybody returning back to conferences and interactions, and everybody was just so hungry for that kind of interaction. Right. We've been cooped up for so long, and it was just really nice to see one another and get back to this. The speed of development and exchanging of ideas and everything that I loved that. But, definitely, you know, that that, that pent up steam and energy and momentum couldn't carry on forever. And so I kind of saw that like really concentrated, then started to separate again into different facets within the community. Really been interesting over the past couple of years to see, the focus on, licenses altogether. You know, I used to work at HashiCorp before CNCF, you know, asked, ask me anything. Feel free to reach out at me, stuff like that. I have many spicy opinions and thoughts on that front. Given where I am with all my focuses and biases.

But, I think that's been something that's been really interesting to see, too. Lots of market effects and other, you know, more things that you probably wouldn't read before you, you go to bed. Not that interesting, not really story worthy. But there's things like in the US with like the zero interest rate percentage going away, how organizations think about their software engineering teams, that they think about open source, going through similar things like you have brought up with environmental sustainability, how do we pay for this? How do we make sense of this? And then getting to I'm really, really like huge shout out to Bob Killen who joined the CNCF coming from Google. He's he saw this problem so acutely and then has been able to really develop some great material and thoughts on how you measure ROI and prove this out is like, no, we have the data. It is much better. It's better than just saying like, everything's better and open source. He's like, I'll show you exactly where that is. I'll say, come here, you know? So I think the more efforts like that are going to be what we see over the next couple of years, kind of cutting through it. I again, I think I had a good, a good intention and direction, but we have to get it right.

And there are places where we're generating a lot of like slop and glut and just this waste, especially within content pull requests and things like that. And it's such a bummer. Again, attention is good. It might be able to get you a feature that's great, but like, let's figure out something that is maintainable for maintainers and doesn't overindex them waste their time because they're already there. They're are they've already got a ton on their shoulders. We don't want to add more to them. Here's 15 more pull requests to take a look at. Probably not how they want to spend their day. Yeah. Triage intention kind of this. Like how do we have our heads up display on a lot of these things is, I think, what's important to take a look at.

Yeah. But yeah, that's and that's just from what I can see there will absolutely be unknown unknowns. I'm curious to see what they're going to be over the next couple of years.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. It's definitely really exciting to seeing like the CNCF like just grows so much. And like there's such a sense of community and camaraderie. And I think, the reason why so many projects in the CNCF have done well, too, is because I think organizations are seeing a value in having folks on the payroll contributing to open source projects. And, you know, I give OpenTelemetry as an example because we've, you know, it's it's a project that has the backing of major observability vendors where they do have developers on the payroll doing OTel work because we're trying to establish it as a standard so that we're all ingesting the same data. And the differentiating factor is, what do we do with your data? And if if we didn't have that, you know, then it would be back to, you know, the, the pre OTel days of like everyone's just like maintaining their own framework and that's, that's just like more cognitive load that than you need it really. And, and and plus you don't have the power of the community like you have people from different companies. You know, I work with frenemies, I'll say in air quotes because they're they're all my friends. Like, seriously, I don't see them as competitors. Like, we we all work towards the same goal. And I think that's that's what's so wonderful about about CNCF.

TAYLOR:
It's I completely agree. I, I've been I still haven't found a good fit for this. I will one of these days, but I really do want to do like a diss like a funny disc diss track with someone else in the community. Like we want that kind of, you know, burn someone on on, like social media or something like that in a playful, playful match. But it's, that's fun. And then you kind of, like, encourage one another as, like your rival within the industry. I do think that's so much fun. And, yeah, I think it's really about the consistency. The two. Right. Having a place that you can actually point in and go, it's not like, oh, that's the only meetup I can go to where I can express this, or people are interested in the same thing. We finally kind of created this community where we can all come together and discuss all that stuff, and users feel safe to be able to explore those things and vendors to showcase new technologies and these other things. We can set up standards and have certainty that that's not going to change out from underneath us and power for many years. I it's, it's safety. And I really appreciate all the people that help cultivate and create that. Our, our one of our end user technical advisory board members also talked about open source and saying that, think of it almost as a vendor, too. And I think that that was really impactful to me hearing that at the past KubeCon in Salt Lake City was I was like, oh my gosh, he's right. How how many times do you talk to a vendor and interact with them? Imagine that relationship. If you just never spoke to them or any person in your life, you're like, you're in my life. I'm never going to engage with you. Yeah, open source won't work like that either. Vendor relationship doesn't work like that. Friendship. Horrible. So, it's it's it's all about intention. It's all about the perspective that you hold on that front and again like and hopefully that's always changing. And you're never the same person, you know from moment to moment as you go through all those perspective changes. But it's fun. It's a it's a wild place to be.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, definitely. And you know, you also touched upon something that I think is like a key thing for these types of events, conferences, are the relationships. Like, when I think back to my first KubeCon, where I knew maybe five people, and now every time I go to a KubeCon it looks it feels like a big, like, family reunion. And like, it's like your KubeCon friends. You know, once a year or twice a year. And it's like, hey, let's, let's hang out, let's, let's nerd out.

TAYLOR:
Don’t be square. Just be there at KubeCon.

ADRIANA:
It’s where all the cool kids at. The the other thing that I want to go back to, because, you know, we're talking about, the fires in LA, and you're, we were talking earlier about, like, the rallying of the community because, you know, we're talking about the tech community, but also, we've got like, the community, like the human community. And which I think is, is so important. If you could talk a little bit about that. What what the experience has been like, you know, it's it's obviously like a really crappy situation. And, you know, like Toronto, we, we we are not near a forested area, but, north northeast of us is, is Quebec. And we had a couple of years, some, some forest fires and then the smoke, blew down in our direction. So we saw like some haze and whatever. And the air quality was bad. And I remember having to wear a mask outside because, like, you'd go outside, you can't breathe. You're much closer to that. That is scary. Like, tell us folks what what that's about, like, so. So that they get a sense of like the this is serious stuff.

TAYLOR:
It's it's it's truly wild. I, I was, I, I went up to, to see some friends in, Palo Alto, just the weekend before all of this kicked off. I ended up driving back down to Los Angeles. In in an EV, you know, for for this. And, and it was on, Tuesday that I was coming back down. I was getting back into Los Angeles, maybe, like 930, 10:00 at night. And, so that was prime time for all of this starting to really kick off. I that was the Altadena fire that was close to me. That kicked off as I was driving home. I was about 30 minutes out, and that 100 mile an hour gust of wind blew, cars were crashing, debris was thrown onto the road, people's windshields were exploding. It was.

ADRIANA:
Whoa.

TAYLOR:
I can't even tell you. Like fear didn't enter into that. It was more like. It was like I was watching mad Max. And so it was like I was like, what? You know, you're in shock at that point. I continued driving, roiling black smoke cars pulled up to the side of the road, have to drive through it. And then finally, three minutes out from my house, it transformers. Exploding. Purple. Lights.

ADRIANA:
Oh my God.

TAYLOR:
And I'm like, what is going. You know, it's.

ADRIANA:
That's very dystopian.

TAYLOR:
It's, I'll look back in like every X amount of time, I'll look back and it will be funnier because I'm safe, you know that, like, in that moment. Oh my goodness. It was just wow. Again, this this fear is not there. It is more just shock. And you're like, did what I see just happen is is has been most of the feeling here, at least for me. I know I've talked to some friends and others, that some have had to evacuate, some been displaced. Thankfully, you know, all of them, that they still have their lives, families, you know, it's like thankfully, thankfully, thankfully. But seeing a lot of the footage, videos and then hearing their stories, you know, some of them are have just been really, fearful or angry that their friends or family haven't reached out or they don't hear anyone. There's just this lingering frustration and they don't know how to make sense of it. And I think that that's kind of the sad part. The good part is that that was kind of earlier on and like I'd say more of last weeks kind of like vibe and temperature check. This week it's you started to see a little bit of it last week, but people showing up. Oh my gosh, you lost everything. Here, take some clothes. Tons of businesses around here. Like candle stores and companies. Places you just have nothing. Now that you don't see the correlation. Come work here. We have Wi-Fi. We're going to give you water. Hey, anyone affected by this? We'll give you a free meal. So many places. Just like open arm- completely open. Doors, open arms, willing to help, assist. Comedy stores here, putting on shows, fundraisers. 100% of proceeds are going to victims of these amazing neighbors in affected areas. Like, hey, my cul de sac got impacted. We have a GoFundMe here. These people's names. Here's what they lost. Please help us. There's a park just nearby my house.

About like a quarter of a block away. And, tons of green grass there and a whole bunch of people just head gear, clothes, things, cutlery, plates, things that you just wouldn't normally expect to have. It's been, I would have never thought in Los Angeles, where it's a city that's really desperate. You have to drive everywhere. It just kind of feels distant, even when you're in a very tightly tight knit community. You don't talk to your neighbor, you know, everyday kind of vibes to see that where there's always people out there overwhelmed with people trying to donate time, money, supplies, things like that I would have never expected is truly one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. And so I love seeing that from the community and getting to talk with people, get to hear their stories. You get to see what's going on. You get this form of connection that again, after Covid, it's like, this is finally we we are starting to get back to we're learning how to be ourselves again.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

TAYLOR:
And I love that I love them.

ADRIANA:
That's so heartwarming. I mean, in the midst of the tragedy, to see humanity come together like that, which, you know, we, we kind of need these feel good, heartwarming stories because times, times are, are testy right now, for sure.

TAYLOR:
It's I, I think that it's, you know, it's one of those things of life that might not be fair, make sense or, you know, there's like justice, fairness, and I forget what the other one and like equality or the things that you are never guaranteed in life, like, you know, I wish that they were, but, you shouldn't need something like this to happen, to have this warmth.

TAYLOR:
But like some, sometimes that's just how it plays out. But it not getting away from how beautiful that this is. And getting to see those people come together, like you said. So, yeah, I'm. I'm inspired. It's hard to not say that. And, you know, just like. Yeah, it's just in my eyes. It's just, I swear.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, it's really it's really heartwarming to see. And like I said, we we need more. We need more of these stories. We need to be reminded. We need to remind each other that there's still goodness and kindness in the world. Which is so, so important. Now we're we're coming up on time. But before we, we close things off, I was wondering if you had any words of wisdom or hot takes?

TAYLOR:
Yeah, I think that, I really I that's just very front and center for me right now is just, you know, with everything going on, AI, wildfires, all these other things, it's it's for me, what's right in front of my eyes is just that intention. When you take a look at, again, seeing this around the community going backwards in our flow, beautiful to see that people are focused on things, you know, like, what do I bring, what do I do? And then self-organizing. Amazing. Is it perfect? No, but everything is getting to where it needs to go within reason. So I think the same thing with AI, it's focusing in on intention. You know, it makes sense to have seven pull requests and all those, you know, are you a 10x developer with all the green tiles on GitHub? Not just something that's having an impact, right? Think about the change that you're making. It's I encourage people to have momentum to not be discouraged. And, on that front, figure out your balance. But, while you're there, think about some other things to do, too. If you've corrected this word or this this thing, look around. Is there anything else that might make sense to change in your code base or otherwise? Are there other questions for process or other things that you haven't thought of that you're like, let me just give this another 20 minutes and think just to make sure it's hard to get changes in after the fact. And then you kind of lose that credibility, too. Unfortunately, when you're quick to ship something or get something out, you know you can lose all that. Trust that you've spent a lot of time building, or you know you can hurt yourself in ways that you might not see just as, something to caution on, but, overall, it's, Yeah, it's yeah, very, very interesting start to the new year in so many aspects. I want to hear all of your stories. I definitely want to encourage people to reach out if you have trouble or questions with getting into open source.

Let's let's figure something out, please. I'm. I'm not somebody who's like, don't at me. Don't reach out. Please do. I love having these conversations. Async or sycn. Would love to chat more on that front. Yeah. If you're not feeling like you're able to bring your full, true, authentic self, let's have a conversation. Let's fix that. I'd love to. I'd love to offer anything that I can on that front.

ADRIANA:
I love that, and I will vouch for what you said because I reached out to you, on on CNCF Slack and said, hey, you want to be on my podcast?

TAYLOR:
We'll make it happen.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. So super, super reachable. Definitely. So, this has been amazing. Thank you so much, Taylor, for geeking out with me today and for taking the time, especially in the midst of all this chaos going on, in the LA area. And y'all, don't forget to subscribe and be sure to check the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media.

ADRIANA:
Until next time...

TAYLOR:
peace out, and geek out!

The One Where We Geek Out on Empowering Women with Mariana Carvalho

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Adriana Villela, Hannah Maxwell, Mariana Carvalho) — Tue, 11 Mar 2025 04:00:00 +0000

About our guest:
Mariana Carvalho is a writer and career mentor. She was awarded as one of the El Mundo Boston Latino 30 Under 30 in 2022 for her efforts in Diversity and Inclusion in Brazil and Massachusetts and Mentor of the Year by WomenTech Network in 2023. In 2024, she co-authored the book “Women in Technology - How Diversity and Inclusion Will Change the Game in Organizations and Society”. She is the co-founder of Brazilians in Tech, a non-profit for women in Technology in Brazil. Mariana has 12 years of professional experience, the last seven in corporate America. Over the last six years, Mariana has mentored more than 200+ people from Brazil, USA, India, France, and Ireland. Mariana holds a Bachelor’s in Marketing, an MBA, and a Master of Science in Computer Science.

Find our guest on:

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show notes:

Additional notes:

Aicha Laafia on Geeking Out (podcast & YouTube)
Adriana's article on Medium based on her KCD Porto talk

Transcript:
ADRIANA:
Hey, fellow geeks. Welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery DevOps, observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela. Coming to you from Toronto, Canada. Geeking out with me today, I have Mariana Carvalho. Welcome, Mariana!

MARIANA:
Thank you. Thank you for having me.

ADRIANA:
I am super excited to have you, and always excited to have another Brazilian on the podcast.

MARIANA:
Yay.

ADRIANA:
It’s a treat. Being able to, like, connect with my culture. I think it's really important. I, I've, I've found in the last several years, the importance of reconnecting to your cultural roots, because I lived in such isolation from my cultural roots for a long time here in Canada. So it's been kind of nice to have that. So I love it when I meet other Brazilians.

MARIANA:
I me too. I mean, we can speak a little Portuguese too, but, you know, even though we speaking English, it's like we can see the culture in the way we talk to each other. You know, it it shows. So I love it.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, absolutely. And where are you calling from today?

MARIANA:
I'm calling from Boston, Massachusetts. So it's very cold here too.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. We are, we are definitely cold buddies. I think we both, both our cities have received a lot of snow as of the time of this recording. I think, Toronto about half a meter in, in like five days, which is a lot.

MARIANA:
Yeah. Same here. I was in D.C. last week, and it was also super windy and, many flights got canceled. I almost didn't come home. I know. It was awful, but we were safe and sound. And now it's so funny because I've been talking with my parents, and for them it's like almost 40°C. So the discrepancy is just so frightening.

MARIANA:
I don't know. Ai. It's frightening.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. It's wild like I, I'm originally from Rio de Janeiro, and I have family there who said right now, and we're recording this February 18th. So it's in the middle of summer in, in Brazil, 50 degrees and in Rio... 50 Celsius.

MARIANA:
Wow. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
I don’t, I can't even, I like I'm okay with 40. You know I it is my South American blood is okay with that. I'm not okay with -15. I'm okay with 40, but I can't even imagine 50. Like, that's scary.

MARIANA:
Yeah. It's changing so much and so quickly it feels that doesn't change quickly. But then all of a sudden then the extremes are the ones that I think it's wild to see. Yeah. Here and there. Right.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And you know and it's something I'll, I'll probably dig into a little bit later because I know like I connected you with, with a writer recently on your Medium publication and she does a lot of writing on sustainability actually. And she's also been a past guest on Geeking Out, so I, I would love to talk about that in a little bit. But first we have our icebreaker questions. Okay. Are you ready?

MARIANA:
Let's do it. Yes.

ADRIANA:
First question. Are you a lefty or already.

MARIANA:
Righty.

ADRIANA:
Okay. Do you prefer iPhone or Android?

MARIANA:
iPhone.

ADRIANA:
Me too. Yes, iPhone. All the way. Here's my iPhone.

MARIANA:
At home I have two iPads. I have a MacBook.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah. Same. Same full. Fully integrated. Next question. I think I know your answer now. Do you prefer Mac, Linux, or Windows?

MARIANA:
Mac. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
Okay. Next one. Do you have a favorite programing language?

MARIANA:
Oh my gosh. I think Python, but that's so funny because I didn't learn Python. Doing my master's degree. Oh, sorry. That. Should I just answer and not explain why?

ADRIANA:
Please. Please. No. Go ahead, go ahead. I love it. Okay. I always tell people you can go as deep or not as deep as. Because I think it's okay to get to know a guest. So go ahead.

MARIANA:
Yeah I remember learning Python during during my master's degree. My ex-boyfriend at the time, he taught me how to like how to program in Python. Like using Kaggle is a website I think was acquired by Google. It was so fun to sort out some of the data sets there. And I was like, okay, this is so. Not easy. But it was just so natural to do it, you know, to sort out and I don't know, just to just to really code. I think I had the most fun coding Python, but then after I finished school and up and then when I started working in corporate, I never used it any more. So it is kind of rusty right now.

Yeah, but I remember it being very, very fun. I remember I created a little game that was I think the name of the game is 2048. It’s a game that, you know, so I remember that. It's so addictive. And I remember I made like I created this little game just in a sandbox. And I was like, okay, how can I, you know, try to use my technical skills in fun things.

And I remember using Python for the data set on Kaggle that was sorting out numbers, of the female Nobel Prize winners. You know, I was like, if I want to learn something using a technical skill, I better use that on something that I have fun with. So and that's usually something that I recommend to people. It's like if you want to create a portfolio or if you want to do something using a programing language, or maybe like some people are like learning how to deploy on different infrastructure as a service, right?

So like, how can you do that? Having fun? Just try just do that through a game or through something that you're going to enjoy. So you don't give up in the middle of the process. So.

ADRIANA:
I love that. I love that so much because that's my same philosophy. If you're doing something fun, you will get obsessed over it. And you will have that motivation to find a solution. And I also agree with you on Python. Python was not my first programing language, and I spent, for listeners, viewers of the show. I spent most of my career in Java, which I've said many times, on the show, but, I learned Python later in life and fell in love with it because, as you said, it's so pleasant to code in. So I can I can totally relate. Okay. Next question. Do you prefer dev or ops?

MARIANA:
I think dev.

ADRIANA:
All right. Cool. Next one. Do you prefer JSON or YAML JSON?

MARIANA:
I worked with JSON before, so that's the one that I.

ADRIANA:
Fair enough. Fair enough.

MARIANA:
Yeah.

ADRIANA:
And do you prefer spaces or tabs?

MARIANA:
Spaces.

ADRIANA:
Okay. And two more questions. Do you prefer consuming content through video or text?

MARIANA:
Oh, text I love reading. Writing full text.

ADRIANA:
I would have been surprised if you said, video because because you, you have a publication on Medium, but have never know. I've had people who are like, oh, I thought you like video more because you do the podcast as a video. I'm like, no.

MARIANA:
I'm.... You like creating video, right? But like to consume is different. Yeah, I love reading. I think it has more of the pause, and the video has a lot of the stimuli that I don't know if I like for long term, I, I prefer reading for sure.

ADRIANA:
I get too distracted by video.

MARIANA:
Yeah.

ADRIANA:
Like you said, stimuli. Okay. Final question. What is your superpower?

MARIANA:
Oh, I got my superpower. Well. I love connecting people with each other. That's something that I enjoy doing. And, I feel that is very altruistic. I don't know, I feel that I, I don't gain anything out of connecting people with each other, but I do because I, I genuinely care of, like, two things being put together. There's a book. I don't know. I don't know the name of the book in English, but there's a phrase that says the word changes when two things that that have never been together, they meet. It's something like that. Yeah. And I think it's beautiful because any encounter can really change the course of one's life. One’s life. So yeah, I love connecting people.

ADRIANA:
Oh, that's so great. Yeah, that that's such a great superpower. And I think it's such an important superpower. And I think it's like so important to like, for women in tech, having having those connections, being able to connect, other women to each other because I think we’re... sometimes it's hard for us to find each other. So to be able to connect each other and introduce people to other awesome people, I think is such a such a lovely gift to the world. So, yeah, absolutely.

MARIANA:
And I think you can do it. And I think you do that too. So it's it's a great gift. And what's your superpower?

ADRIANA:
Oh, mine. I would say it's picking up things fast and then writing about them, like. So learning things fast and then writing about my learnings in an accessible manner, I would say, is my superpower.

MARIANA:
Okay, I love that. Well, you you did that also for the listeners. I also interviewed Adriana for my podcast. And I think the article that you wrote, on top of a, a lecture you gave in Portugal that shows that too.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah, I, I'm still blown away. So for, for folks who are, listening, watching so I, I gave a keynote at KCD Porto last fall and, the talk unfortunately wasn't recorded. And I thought, well, I still want to bring this to the masses. So I wrote it up as a blog post and, and then I had at that point been submitting articles on Medium to your publication, and, and then you were kind enough to boost that, article. And I got like, so many, so many reads on that article. It's like mind blowing. I'm, I'm so touched by the number of people who have, like, responded to it, added it to their reading lists. People who are influenced by it. I think it's it's really cool to have that effect. And I thank you for, for that boost on Medium because.

MARIANA:
Of course! I didn't do anything. You did the hard work, you wrote it.

ADRIANA:
And, you know, I think this is a great segue to into, you know, talking about, talking about your, your publication on Medium. And then if we could walk back from there, talking about, like, how you got, how you got your start in tech, but. Yeah, let's let's start first with your Medium publication. Tell us what it is, where we can find it. And I'll, I'll include a link to it in the show notes as well.

MARIANA:
Amazing. Thank you so much. The the website is medium.com/womenintechnology. And you can find all the articles there that are written by our writers. So if anyone wants to start writing a Medium, they can create an account, they can write for Women in Technology, they can write for other publications out there that are also technical, non technical. There are many topics for for the listeners who are interested in different areas. And I created Woman in Technology, Adriana, back in 2023 when I left my corporate job and I always loved writing, I started my blog called Hello Mari World, because “hello world” probably the listeners know, is the first line of code that we learn how to code. And, when I was doing my master's in computer science back in July 2017, I was finishing my internship, and by that time I was like, that's super cool. I'm learning so much. I'm experiencing all these great things here. During my master's, during the internship, learning, connecting with people, learning more about technology. And I wish someone had helped me in the past.

So why not just start sharing with the word the things that I'm learning along the way? So my blog started. There was also HelloMariWorld.com and then now today is my website. But before it was just a blog. Just a blog. It was a blog. And then I transitioned to other platforms that I was writing for. I wrote a lot of about my journey in the States as, Brazilian, and there was other websites for women in like women traveling or woman living overseas, living overseas.

And then I realized when I left my corporate role at Dell I was like, I still want to be writing and connecting with other women. So let me continue writing on Medium. I was already a writer there, but why not create my own community, and do things differently? So that was amazing because I was able to connect with women from many different countries, not only the United States where I am today, or Brazil and, the community has grown.

We have more than 2000 subscribers today, and we have almost 500. Yeah, and almost 500 women who are writers. Not everyone writes every every month or every week. We have a people who write more than the others. So there's no mandatory commitment for someone to be writing for the for the publication. And I think just the community and connecting with women, listening to their stories, and be able to contribute to what Medium wants to be online, there's no ads on Medium.

That's something that I really like, because I feel so overwhelmed in other social social media platforms. So Medium is my cozy, comfy place corner on the internet to work where I can connect with other women and it's just mind blowing to see how people are really willing to help each other through their writing and through their experiences.

So Women in Technology is a publication for people who identify themselves as women, who are eager to share, who are eager to learn, and, having you, for example, having you in the podcast not only as a writer for the publication, but being able to interview interview... being able to interview you and having you as a guest speaker and hearing your voice is very empowering for the other readers that that maybe want to consume information in a different way, not just through the writing form to the written form, but also listening to what you have to say. So yeah.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, that's so great. And, I, I'm a huge fan. I love what you do. And, you know, I and the way we met was, I think I had published one of my articles on Medium, and then you left a note saying, hey, would you like to write for my publication? I'm like, oh, cool.

MARIANA:
Yeah.

ADRIANA:
But it's so great. And I'm so glad that you invited me. And it's it's such a lovely publication, and I love to be able to, you know, help to empower women through your publication and, like you, I'm a huge fan of Medium. I learned a lot through Medium. And I think it's it's a great way to, you know, to consume content and to meet other people.

So. Yeah, I, I love what you're doing. And, you know, I also, you know, I, I think after we spoke, I connected you with, Aicha Laafia, who was a guest on, on this podcast, to be also a writer, on your publication. And she's been on fire. She's been, like, publishing all sorts of articles on on Medium. It's been great.

MARIANA:
Yeah, yeah.

ADRIANA:
And her topic is so great. She's so passionate about it. She talks a lot about sustainability in tech. Which is wonderful and very timely, I would say, as well.

MARIANA:
Very important for, for what we're living today.

ADRIANA:
Exactly, exactly. Yeah. Given given this wild weather, even though it's funny, you know, we're we're talking about like the, the, the snowfall that we've been experiencing I know that this what we're having Toronto right now this winter is like a much more normal winter than we've been having in the last several years where, it feels like we're spending more time below zero and actually getting snow versus past years.

I think with climate change, we've been experiencing more temperatures hovering just below to just above zero. It would snow one day and then it would all melt the next day, which is really weird. And yeah, and I think being able to bring awareness to people and making people, realize like use of tech has an impact, people don't realize that there's an impact to using the the programing language that you choose, can have an impact on the infrastructure that you choose. People, you know, we love AI these days. AI consumes a lot of, consumes a lot of power. And so being able to educate folks on that is, is so important.

MARIANA:
Absolutely. Yeah. It's not just using ChatGPT for any of your needs is understanding what it's being technically consumed by the data base in the background, how the servers are running. Right? We don't know much of that, as the mainstream people don't necessarily know what is happening behind the scenes, aka behind the servers. So and I feel that there's not a lot of a benchmark today. I know there are researchers. I know there are organizations that are coming together to put those guardrails in place because they are needed. They are needed. I'm not a specialist in that, but at least we're seeing some movement to going to the right direction.

ADRIANA:
Exactly. And your publication becomes a platform for spreading that that word as well.

MARIANA:
Yeah. And that's exactly why, when I read an article that I think can really resonate with people, not only your tech career experience, but if there is an article in technology that can have an impact, and it's going to explain to people in a easy to understand way, those are the types of articles that we want to see in the in the publication that we want to see on Medium, right. Things are going to help people really learn and understand. If you prefer YouTube, go for it. You go to YouTube, go learn on YouTube. Some people are more visual. Great, but just educate yourself because it's empowering. Education is empowering.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. And what you said in terms of making, making it accessible, because I, you know, I, I, I feel like I'm kind of over the days of, like, dry, boring technical content. Why does it have to be boring?

MARIANA:
Exactly.

ADRIANA:
And we're not all geniuses. We don't understand, like, some of these complicated topics that, you know, other people are, like, too smart for their own good and terrible at explaining. We need to dumb it down. Dumb it down for me. Like, please, I want you to dumb it down for me. I welcome it in and I and I don't see that in a condescending manner. Just you know, like, it's a lot easier for my brain to process it when, when you speak to me and in ways that are more understandable and are less abstract. So I.

MARIANA:
I love that. I love that I interviewed, Radia Perlman for the podcast The Timeless Technology Podcast. Adriana is one podcast that came also from the Woman in Technology publication radio. She was the network engineer that developed the STP protocol, the Spanning Tree protocol. That's basically what everyone uses today for devices to communicate with each other. And I was asking her, like I didn't, I think I asked her about her superpower, but before that she mentioned something.

One of the things that she was really good at is explain things in a very easy way, and the power of that. So it's not in a condensed sending way that you mentioned, but it's a way of empowering the other person. If you come to me with a technical term that I've never heard about, what a what a pleasant surprise that you were going to be the one to explain that to me for the first time, you know, just approach that in a way of, okay! You don't know. It's totally okay that you don't know. I'm going to do my best to explain to you so you can really enjoy learning that. So I think the teaching and, being the teacher and the student in life, it's it's that balance knowing that we don't know so much and bringing that ignorance mindset. You know, I'm here to learn.

Yeah. And if you can explain to me in a very accessible way, it's is the perfect match into learning because technology can be very, very complex. And it's not for us to say, oh, I don't want to learn because it's too complex for me. Okay, what what you don't know? And why do you want to know? Right. And then finding people out there because there are people out there willing to explain from a place of humility, from a place of it's okay that you don't know. And I love that. That's that's mentoring too.

ADRIANA:
Yes. Oh my God, that's so true. And I think that's so important to, you know. Yeah. Explain it from, from a place of, of humility and, and this recognition that you don't know all the answers and it's okay to not know.

MARIANA:
It's so relieving.

ADRIANA:
Right?! Yes, yes, I know I used to like in my younger days, I used to think I have to know all the answers. And it's like, why? So now I'll be in meetings. I'm like, I'm sorry, I'm new. Can you just explain this to me? I'm not familiar with this term.

MARIANA:
Yeah, it's the beginner mindset I love that. Yeah, the beginner's mindset.

ADRIANA:
More people need to embrace this even. And you know, I always say, like, you, you should never be the smartest person in the room because otherwise you have nothing left to learn.

MARIANA:
Exactly, exactly. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
So, yeah. I want to I want to just go back a little bit because you mentioned, your second podcast that you have, what do you tell folks about that? Because it's such a cool topic. And also, what inspired you to come up with that idea?

MARIANA:
You mean The Timeless Technology Podcast?

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

MARIANA:
Yeah. There's a podcast called Wiser Than Me by Julia Louis-Dreyfus from Seinfield. Oh my gosh, I love this podcast. She I think she's 70- something? And she interviews women who are older than her and wiser than her. Yeah. And that I was obsessed of listening to her podcast. Right. She interviews like celebrities, Hollywood actresses. Reporters, like many things, writers. And then there was one time that I was like, I'm working technology. I am learning so much, but I'm just 32, you know? What do I know about life? I don't I know nothing, I know nothing, And I was like, okay, how can I talk with women that just did some amazing work in technology that we have no idea of.

And then I started researching, researching about women. And I learned about Mary Ellen Wilkes was my first guest, and she was responsible for developing the first operating system for personal computing computer in the 60s. And then I was like, okay, I need to talk. Is she alive? First question is, she was alive. And then I started researching about other women. And some of them already passed away. Some of them were still alive. Some of them don't reply to my emails. And then Mary Ellen, I it was so hard to find her. Adriana. So hard. I went in contact with Wellesley College. They connect me with her. She responded to my email, you know, like I had to dig, dig, dig. It was like a journalistic.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, I was gonna say, like. That’s hard-core.

MARIANA:
I love that work. FBI type of work. I love it. And she she responded to me. She was like, yes, of course I'd love to participate on your project. It was just a project, right? It's kind of a historical, historical project, like search. And then, I talked to her and then I invited some other women, Radia. And at first I was like, they would never respond to me. They are just so important, you know? And then I started receiving those emails, and I would love to participate. I would love to share. And I was like, okay, I am into something here. Those women, they have their their life stories. And they also made a long lasting impact in technology on things that we are used in today.

And Mary Ellen was a huge example. Radia Perlman was another great example. I was able to interview Doctor Carolyn Oglesby. She's the daughter of Doctor Gladys West, the woman who developed GPS.

ADRIANA:
Damn!

MARIANA:
In the 60s for the government. And I was like, do people... does everyone know that this woman was the one that helped create what we use today? Every single day in everywhere we go. So it was mind blowing for... to me to understand of those some of these women, they are alive and I want to register their voices. I, you know, like yes, you can read about them, you can read articles about them. There's so many resources online. But I want to ask them, I want to hear their voices. I love that. I love podcasts, right. So, so why not register in the form of audio? And then the project started and we are almost done with season one. And I'm already starting interview with people for season two. And it's been amazing. It's been. So much of their ideas are just disrupting my own ideas of life, about marriage, about how to raise their kids. And it's been beautiful. Every time that I finish a recording... Adriana, you interview people and I'm sure many off your guests, you feel so inspired by. I finish my recordings with them and I need time to process, you know, like, what did I just listen? So know you? Yeah, it's I don't know, it's very, heartwarming to to be doing this project and being able to to register their voices.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Yeah.

MARIANA:
To document their voices.

ADRIANA:
That it's so inspiring. What a beautiful story. And for for those who. And it's going to be in the show notes. But, if you're listening, it's called the Timeless Technology podcast. And, you know, so many cool lessons from this first of all, the fact that you're like, you pushed past the fear of like, why would they want to talk to me and still did it? And then you realize, of... yeah, some of them do want to talk to me. And I think that's amazing. And I think that's an incredible lesson to be learned. It's like even if you are unsure, just go for it.

MARIANA:
Exactly. I have a phrase that I say to my mentees: “It's not your job to say ‘no’ to yourself.” You are not the one saying “no” to yourself, you know, like, let the recruiter tell, you “no”. Let the, your job is to ask for the things that you want. And then when, when I look back at my middle eight years, nine years, leaving the United States, everything that I was able to accomplish was because I asked for.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think it's so important to just summon the courage to ask, because the worst that can happen is “no”, right? But as you said, you're not saying no to yourself. You're saying yes to yourself. Let someone else give you the “no”. Hopefully it won't be a “no.”

MARIANA:
Exactly.

ADRIANA:
That’s so lovely. That's so lovely. And I think, like, how cool is it to, you know. I think we really underestimate how much women had an effect in history because unfortunately, you know, these things tend to get overlooked, buried, whatever. Right? Because history is full of, like, men. We see it a lot in the history books. All these like, powerful men doing things. But there's like, so many powerful women, incredible women doing incredible things. So thank you for sharing those stories. That's incredible. So inspired. I'm going to make sure I subscribe to this podcast. And I'm going to check out the. Also the one from, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, which you said is called Wiser Than Me, right?

MARIANA:
Yes. Wiser Than Me.

ADRIANA:
Awesome, awesome. And you know, I want to take another a bit of another step back, and talk about, like, your career in tech. How did you, how did you start, your career in tech? You mentioned that you did a Master's in Computer Science. Was your undergrad also tech-related, or was it non-tech-related?

MARIANA:
That's a great question. My bachelor's was in marketing. I studied marketing at ESPM in Brazil, in São Paulo. Then I had a scholarship. I like mentioning that because I come from a middle class, so I always had scholarships. All my elementary, high school and then bachelors during my bachelors. Then I moved to Rio to do a Master’s. An MBA Master’s, also with a scholarship.

And then at the time in 2015, I came to the States, I met, a chair of the Department of for a computer science school in Mississippi, and he asked me if I had if I was interested in coming to the States with a scholarship. No, no, he didn't mention the scholarship to study computer science. And I told him I'm finishing my MBA and I wouldn't be able to move here. Like I wouldn't be able to afford.

And then after I think 6 or 7 months, I came back again and he offered me a scholarship. I was dating someone that was also in the in the computer science path at the time. And then he was like, if I give you a scholarship, would you be able to would you be interested in coming, to study computer science to do a master's degree?

Because I don't have any other women in my in my lab, in the lab, in the, in the department. And I was like, oh, with a scholarship. I've played that game, you know? I know how it is and work so hard. So yes, sure. So I finished my MBA and then I applied. I remember I still remember to this day. It was Carnaval in Brazil 2016, I remember I did I was living in Rio de Janeiro... I know, I know, I missed all the parties of that last Carnaval in Rio because I had to take my TOEFL, TOEFL exam to apply for the to apply for the, the the Master’s. And I remember I did that and then I got selected, I became a assistant, a, TA, a teaching assistant at the time for a professor.

I was able to get a scholarship. I was able to get assistantship. And that's a question that I receive all the time. Like, why? Why Mississippi? You’re living in Boston now. Why Mississippi first? And I got a scholarship. I wouldn't say no to a scholarship. You know, full ride scholarship. It's like opened so many doors for me. And then afterwards. So the journey was just like looking at your opportunities, the opportunities that are presented to you and just assessing, okay, where they're going to take me. And I embrace the ones that I saw that had the potential to take me somewhere else, somewhere better that I was going to be able to grow. So in that movement, I didn't explain why I was interested in computer science, too.

I was working in the alumni organization for ESPM in Rio at the time. We were working on a project to create an intra, like internal network for for ex students, for like former students, alumni. And I was so interested in learning what things were happening behind the scenes, like, okay, how are the developers creating that? And, I thought that was a great opportunity to learn more about the things that I was only able to see. I wasn't able to code because I didn't know. So I was like, okay, why not? Is opportunity being presented? I can learn about. And I thought that technology was just coding and programing. Yeah, little did I know because I became a solutions engineer afterwards working in cloud computing.

So technology is so much more advanced than we think. And I'm very but I'm glad I had a very narrow mind at the time, at the possibilities. But throughout the journey you can expand and learn more. So I'm very grateful that I that I took that path and it was a it was a change. It was a life changing decision, for sure.

ADRIANA:
That's so cool. And, you know, it's it's it's really cool too, because I think it's a it's such a positive message, like, you know, it's one thing to have an opportunity presented, but it's what you do with that opportunity. And you took that opportunity and you took it like to the next level. And you've built like a career out of it just because you said yes to that opportunity.

And it's open so many doors, which is incredible. I also want to mention to folks who aren't familiar with the Brazilian school system, because we do have public school in Brazil, but usually, if you want to get a decent education, it means you have to go to a private school, which means cha-ching So even going to a quote unquote regular high school costs you money, which is why. You know. Yeah, I mean, as you said, the middle class, you know, to have a decent shot at a good elementary, high school, etc., scholarships provide those opportunities. Different story if you're rich. Right?

MARIANA:
Totally different story. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Which is, it's interesting because we we take that for granted, I think in, in Canada and the US and in many European countries where, you know, you have, you have the public education system where you have a decent shot at getting a decent education system. And even like countries in Europe where like universities, either free or very cheap, which is kind of nice because that that's one thing the US can be very, it can be very pricey to go to school in the US.

MARIANA:
Absolutely. Yeah. And, sometimes decent education means getting a decent job and a good job in a high, high, high paying job. And another funny story, interview Ali Luna. She is a scientist at NASA, and she went to San José State University, and she was telling me during the interview how much, like, how many students came up to her and ask her like, oh, probably you went to the Ivy League, you went to MIT, you got your your aerospace engineering degree in X, Y, and Z place.

And she was like, no, it was a state university in California, so I did it. You can do it too. And you can be impactful as well. So never for the listeners, never let... just because you maybe you are going to a community college, for example. Right? Community college is something very common here in the States, especially if you don't have access to those private schools. Expensive schools you can take, you can put you in the right path if you know how to take the right opportunities to go after whatever you want. So yes, I went to HBCU. Jackson State University is a HBCU college, right? Historically Black College and University. And maybe because I didn't know that it wasn't a big school, I was like, I'm going to try to find the best job I can, and I got a job offer to work for Dell.

That was that is one of the largest organizations, tech organizations in the world. So never let the place you are today just dictate whatever opportunity comes next.

ADRIANA:
Yes, that's so important because I think, it's very it's it's very easy to get hung up on, like where you went to school, what kind of degree you have. And I've, I've interviewed my fair share of people on this podcast where some people didn't go to university and they have very successful tech careers. Some people studied, you know, stuff completely unrelated to what they ended up doing and, you know, took the path of going to like a coding bootcamp to level up or just got experience out in the field.

But it's it's really what these folks have done with the opportunities given to them. Don't, as you said, don't don't let your, your schooling dictate, you know, your your career path because and especially in tech, as we've found out, it's it's open to so many, so many people from different walks of life.

MARIANA:
Yeah.

ADRIANA:
Well that's awesome I mean I could keep, keep on chatting forever and ever. But unfortunately we are coming up on time. Before we go. I you've, you've given us so many words of wisdom, I was wondering if you had any final parting words of wisdom for our audience today.

MARIANA:
I just want to thank you for having me today. Thank you for writing for the, for the Woman in Technology publication. Thank you for interviewing other people and also documenting their journeys that you do in your podcast here, Geeking Out. So I think it's I don't know, it's it's something that we do passionately speaking with others.

But at the end of the day. But at the end of the day, they really, can really impact other people. If there's just one listener to listen to us and take something positive out of our conversation is already amazing. What I would say is, if you are in technology, if you're passionate about something, try to have fun while you were doing it.

I think that summarizes the things that we were talking about. That too.

ADRIANA:
That's amazing. Well, thank you so much for, geeking out with me today, Mariana. Y'all, don't forget to subscribe and be sure to check the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media. Until next time...

MARIANA:
Peace out, geek out.

ADRIANA:
Geeking Out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Villela. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking Out is also produced by my daughter, Hannah Maxwell, who, incidentally, designed all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the socials by going to bento.me/geekingout.

The One Where We Geek Out on Being a Working Mom in Tech with Autumn Nash

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Adriana Villela, Hannah Maxwell, Autumn Nash) — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 05:00:00 +0000

About our guest:

Find our guest on:

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show notes:

Additional notes:

Check out Autumn's podcast, Fork Around and Find Out, co-hosted with Justin Garrison
Tim Banks on Geeking Out, Episode 7, Episode 8, and Episode 28.

Transcript:
ADRIANA:
Hey, fellow geeks. Welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. and geeking out with me today, I have Autumn Nash. Welcome, Autumn.

AUTUMN:
I'm so excited to finally virtually meet you.

ADRIANA:
I know. I'm excited too. And. And you are. I. I think we should play the, you know, six degrees to Tim Banks game, because, like...

AUTUMN:
Is anyone not six degrees from Tim Banks?

ADRIANA:
I know Tim has introduced me to so many amazing people, and I'm so grateful that he made the intros and that we just, like, hit it off. Like, there's been so many people on this podcast that Tim has introduced me to who have, like, now become good friends, and I'm like, oh, I feel.

AUTUMN:
Like he is, like, the ambassador of cool tech people, you know?

ADRIANA:
It is so true.

AUTUMN:
So Tim, like, if Tim is like, you have to meet, like, I hate it when people are like, oh, you should go meet this person. And I'm like, oh, I think it'd be cool. But, like, if Tim is like, go meet this person, like, you know they're going to be cool.

ADRIANA:
I know, right? So, Autumn, where are you calling from today?

AUTUMN:
I am in Seattle.

ADRIANA:
Okay, well, are you ready to get into our. Are. Are we gonna say lightning round questions? I don't think there'll be lightning today. Are you a lefty or a righty?

AUTUMN:
Righty. Look, I am directionally challenged sometimes. I will still, like, do the L thing. And, like, I also can use both hands, but definitely mostly righty.

ADRIANA:
Awesome. Okay, next question. Do you prefer iPhone or Android?

AUTUMN:
iPhone. Team iPhone.

ADRIANA:
Me too. Team iPhone.

AUTUMN:
Okay, good. I was like, please be team iPhone. Like.

ADRIANA:
One thing I wanted to ask, because I think we were talking about this before we started recording because you said you have an art degree, and then you got. And then you got yourself into tech. So I'm curious, how did that. How did you end up in tech from. From an art degree?

AUTUMN:
This is, like, the craziest, longest story, but so I love these stories. I love, like, painting and art and, like, just all the intersections of, like, how art is almost like a. It can be like love, but it could be, like, a protest against things that are, like, going wrong. It can be like, art is just, like, being creative, and art is just such a huge part of my life. But let me tell you, getting a fine arts degree and a graphic design degree does not pay the bills. And I really like fancy coffee and food. And I finished my first degree and I remember like taking my son with me to go like, walk. And it was great, but I was like, I had my own graphic design business and it was just like such a hustle to make so little money and people didn't value, like, they're like, oh, I can go on Fiverr. And like, I'm just like, well, then go to Fiverr. Because, like, I got a whole ass degree and I don't want to do something for $20. Like, you know what I mean?

ADRIANA:
Yes. Oh, God, I can so relate.

AUTUMN:
I was like, I spent so much money on an art degree. I don't want to spend a lot of money to go back to school. And I need a job that's going to make a certain amount of money, but I want to, like, enjoy it. And like, when I was in, I graduated high school and I got tattoos on my wrist because I was like, this is my buy in to never take a, like, shitty job that like, I can't be myself at. You know what I mean?

ADRIANA:
Yeah. I love that.

AUTUMN:
I was like, I need a job that, like, I can show up with like tattooed and pink hair and ridiculousness. And I want it. Like, I think that the way that people treat you at your job, like I always told my little brother, I'm like, you have to find a job that requires enough skill, that makes you special enough that hopefully there's a buy in for them to treat you like somewhat well. Right?

ADRIANA:
Yep.

AUTUMN:
So I was looking and I was like, I need something that's not going to cost a lot of money to go back to school. So I found a school that was not very expensive, which I've gotten a lot of for the school I went to, but whatever. And I was like, I really want it to do with like computers because I love computers. And I want it to be like. I was like, I was in, in the time. At the time I was pregnant with my second son and I was like, I wasn't really sure where my marriage was going. And I was like, I'm gonna have these little kids and I don't want to leave them at home. So it either needs to make enough money that I can put them somewhere that I feel like they're safe. Yeah. But it needs. Or it needs to be from home where I can, like, know that they're like, okay. Yeah. And the other then. So I was living in Virginia because I was married to someone in the military at the time. And I was living in Virginia by the Norfolk base. But like in Suffolk, which that matters later, it's like down the street from Hampton, Virginia.And the movie Hidden Figures came out. And I've always loved computers. I've always been, like, super into, like, how things work. And I got an iMac when I was, I think, in like the third, third grade. And it was the most magical thing ever to me because it was the clear color ones and watching all the circuits and all of that. And then I had, like, this weird sickness in high school and I had to get. Leave my art academy and go to the technical academy. And I just got thrown into one that I didn't want. And it was like building circuits. And I was like, this is so lame. Until I started putting the circuits together and figuring out how to, like, solder them all.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

AUTUMN:
And like, just the experience of watching like, of like your first computer come into your house and like, seeing the. In the. The outside, I mean, the inside of like, what the computer is and turning it on and learning about, like, you know, like, files and floppy disk and all of that. And then the experience of seeing how you solder those, like, pieces on and how, like, just it's all ones and zeros, you know. And then so I was going to school for graphic design. And then also I had to take another technology class which kind of like, was like. It was like Information Technology 101. But it was kind of a lot of that.

Like, you know, like ones and zeros and how computers work. So fast forward, I was watching like, Hidden Figures. And I'd always been like, I don't know if I'm smart enough to go to school for, like, a computer science degree. And I think seeing like, Mary Jackson and like, Katherine Johnson and the fact that, like, they were brilliant, like, they were doing the work at NASA and like, Mary Jackson had gone to Hampton High School, which was right up the street from my house, right where my son was born. At the time I had actually had my son. And he's like, sitting in my lap, right? And I've got, like, a kid next to me watching this movie. And down the street from me, they wouldn't allow this woman who was a aeronautics engineer go to school while she's doing the job. But they wouldn't let her take night classes at that school to, like, further herself. They wouldn't let them go to the bathroom. And, like, it was wild because my son's fifth birthday, yeah. Was at that museum that is now the Katherine Johnson, like, space museum that's right down the street from, like, Langley. And I love space and all that, kind of. And I was just like, I love it so much. I love the Hubble telescopes and everything.

ADRIANA:
I love space too!

AUTUMN:
Girl, we were like, meant for each other. Like, so, like, it just kind of sunk in. Like, how am I gonna tell these little boys? Like, grow up and you can do whatever you want if I'm too much of a chicken to do what I want, Right?

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Yeah.

AUTUMN:
Like, how am I gonna, like, give them a life? Like, I just. I wanted my kids to have a better life. Like, I had such a bad childhood and, like, just. It wasn't like, what I wanted for my kids. And I want it to, no matter what, be able to give my kids a good life. Like, no matter what happens, whether I stayed married or didn't stay married, but I wanted to give them a life where I could still mom, you know? And like, I just got to the point where I was like, well, like, this something I've always really, really loved. And it's like, come up so much in my life. Like I said in high school, it came up like, over and over again. And you're like, well, maybe like at some point, like, you should realize that's like calling you, you know? Yeah. And I was like, there's like so many people that came before me and they fought for the right just to get an education. And I'm going to sit here and like, basically self reject myself before I've even tried, you know? So I had signed up and I went back to school and Carter, which is my second kid, was four months old and I had gone back to school to Maryland. It's like Maryland University, but it's called Maryland University College because it's the military version of Maryland University. So I get all the time for not having a real computer science degree, and it's a software and development security degree. And like, it's not from a fancy school because cares, right?

ADRIANA:
You're kicking ass here. So who cares?

AUTUMN:
So I ended up doing like, my first couple of Java. Java. Well, I did a C class and I did Java classes and I, like, fell in love with Java. I was like, the structure and the brackets and it's beautiful. And I had gone to get help and my friend was like, hey, there's like this. Someone like I've never met on Facebook was like, there's this new military spouse thing that they're helping with coding and stuff. And you've been really into it, talking about it all, like, on Facebook, because I had, like, I was so excited about starting school. And, like, my homework was hard, and I kept making all these Facebook statuses about it.

So I go down and get help, and lo and behold, this is going to become my best friend of the last, like, what, 12 years? And it's funny, I have the truth table notes that she wrote for me, like, from that day. And she helped me with her home with my Java homework, and we've been literal best friends ever since. And I started getting involved with Milspouse Coders, and I became a virtual chapter leader. And then I became on hackathon committee, and we did that. Then they, like, watched us for a long time for a year. And we asked Microsoft and AWS to sponsor, and they said no. And then they said that they're going to watch us the next year. They came back and Microsoft fully sponsored the next hackathon.

And I was like, I'm moving to Seattle and I want to get a job. Then I found out I was pregnant, and I was like, oh, no, what if this ruins my career? And I had an actual female engineer be like, you're never going to get a job now. Like, you just ruined your career. And like, so, like, when I announced it, there wasn't like, congratulations. She was just like, you were working so hard. Why would you ruin your career like that?

ADRIANA:
Oh, my God.

AUTUMN:
Yeah, it was wild. Like, I've had worse things said to me by women than men, but I.

ADRIANA:
I can vouch for that. I've had the same.

AUTUMN:
It's wild.

ADRIANA:
I know! Like, what. What are we doing to each other?

AUTUMN:
I don't like, like there sometimes the stuff that, like, she was just like, you're already, like, in your 30s and, like, it's gonna take you longer and like, now you're gonna like, why would you have another kid? And I was like, thanks. That was the congratulations I was looking for and. And the encouragement right now. So I was like. I told my husband at the time, and I was like, dude, we need to get to Washington. I was like, I want to take the MSAA program, which was the military spouse program at the time. And I was like, we have a hackathon at Microsoft. So I was like, okay, everybody, give me six weeks.

Give me six weeks to drop this baby. I'll get to Washington and I'll, like, be the co chair for, like, the hackathon. So I moved to Washington. Well, we move across country. I stopped in Hollywood, Hawaii, in California, because I'm waiting for my house to be built and like, literally get to Washington, have a baby. I talked to the lady for like program. The program manager for the hackathon. Shout out to Monica because I love her and we're still friends and I can't wait to get coffee when you get back.

What do you call it? And she was like, are you in labor right now? Get off the phone. Like, I rolled up with a big ass data structures book and like, I'm over there like trying to figure out like this whole thing. And I went to meet her before that and she's. I was like, I'm coming back with a baby. And she just looked at me like, like, I love that. But like, she literally was like, go have a baby. Like, Monica is like, she is legit. Like, I love her.

She is the most. She's a gold star mom. She is just a phenomenal human and I've learned so much from her. But I literally met her because she kicked me off the phone when I was trying to plan a hackathon while I was in labor. And so that's how it started. But I ended up getting. Someone told me about the AWS program and ended up as an apprentice at AWS because they didn't do another cohort of the msaa and it was kind of like hard to get to because it was in one, it was in Tacoma and they didn't make. They didn't really think about all the different bases having to like come to this one place.

So that kind of started my whole career. I didn't even know what a solutions architect was. And then all of a sudden I was a specialist solutions architect and I wanted to be a developer while I was finishing my degree. So then I switched over to becoming a developer after being a NoSQL database solutions architect for two years. And then I ended up developer on the Corretto team for creating Amazon's version of Java.

ADRIANA:
That is so cool. Oh my God. And you've touched upon like so many cool things. Like, first of all, I can still relate on, on, you know, getting shit when you were doing graphic design. Because I so partway through my career, I, I quit tech to become a professional photographer for a year.

AUTUMN:
Oh my God. I was a photographer too.

ADRIANA:
Oh my God. That's wild. So you, you probably experienced similar to what you experienced as a graphic designer, which is like, well, I could take these photos with my phone. I'm like, okay, but they're not gonna look as good.

AUTUMN:
Dude. People, I, I really hope that AI fucks art up so bad that people like, I hope it becomes the other way where people start to appreciate art and the hand drawn and, like, how much effort humans have to put into it. Like, I'm going to get finish one of my tattoos after this. And my tattoo artist is like, I can't even go on Pinterest to get, like, pictures anymore and to get examples because, like, everything is AI and it's like, just so, like, altered, you know?

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah. Like, you can tell.

AUTUMN:
Yeah.

ADRIANA:
Oh, sorry. Go ahead. I was gonna say, like, I. I think we. We have a bit of a. Kind of a rebellion towards that with. With the resurgence of, like, the popularity of vinyl, for example, or even. Even film for taking. For taking photos. Like, there's like this huge movement now for. For film photography in place of digital photography. So I. I think we're starting to see some of that rebellion going on.

AUTUMN:
There's so much beauty in things that are handmade or made with imperfection. Like.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

AUTUMN:
For instance, like, what do you call it? Impressionism is like, one of my favorite forms of art because it's like, it's not perfect, you know, and, like, it kind of hurt my soul. Going from, like, fine arts and drawing and painting to graph design. Like, I saw it as a way to make money with art, but I didn't really love it because so much of it was taking out the imperfections.

ADRIANA:
Right, right. Yeah, I can see that.

AUTUMN:
And then, like, so much of photography, like, people don't want, like, beautiful photography that, like, is kind of candid. They want, like, overly photoshopped, like, perfection. Like, and it's just like, I don't want to. I want to take pictures of beautiful things and kind of a. It's almost like an observation. And like, it's like, you know, when you go to, like, a temple to worship something, it's almost like an appreciation. You know what I mean?

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

AUTUMN:
Like, when we're all old and gray, like, what you'll have left are photos and people want to take, like. Like, have you seen those pictures that, like, you could tell, like, monarchs got painted for themselves and it doesn't even look like how they actually looked and stuff.

ADRIANA:
Oh, yeah.

AUTUMN:
Like, that's what people want us to do with photos, you know?

ADRIANA:
Like, so true. It's so true. And. And I. I agree with you. Like, one of, like, my specialty used to be, like, family photography. And I used to do, like, a photo journalistic style, like, very candid photography. And the thing that drove me crazy, I'd sit my clients down and say, okay, this is my style. I'm just documenting your day. I'm like a fly on the wall. I'm not expecting you turn around and smile at me. And there were like inevitably families, most families unfortunately, who would like as soon as they saw the camera trained on them, they'd like turn around and go . Give me their best fake smile.

AUTUMN:
Which gives you the ugliest pictures ever.

ADRIANA:
Oh my God, they were horrible. And, and, and it was like, oh my God, people. Like, you're ignoring everything that I just told you. And, and of course the best photos that I got were the candids when they weren't.

AUTUMN:
But isn't that so funny that that also translates to tech. Like people will on an art degree and they'll be like, oh well like that, like you don't have a fancy degree. But some of the best people that I've ever met are the people that have like non traditional like backgrounds. But also how much does that translate? How many times have you told something about someone, something about something technically and you said this is not a good idea or this would work better another way. It's literally the same shit. Like it's so fun. Like it's the same struggle. And you're like, I've been doing this. Like I'm trying to tell you, I know that so and so documentation told you you can do this but in production this is going to be painful. And they're like, oh, the customer wants this. And you're like okay, look.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Way, way, way too many times. And, and I, I agree. Like people can be so prissy about degrees, so prissy about where you go to school. Like I did a ranty post on LinkedIn, I don't know, a couple months back, talking about...

AUTUMN:
Can we talk about your ranty posts? I love them so much.

ADRIANA:
Oh yeah, my ranty posts.

AUTUMN:
I'd be so here for it. Like always like, and then this dumb person, I'm like, girl, tell them, tell them. I'm like, finally somebody else like is saying this, all this is bullshit.

ADRIANA:
I'm just like, I don't know. I, I, you know when you were talking about the fact that like you got these tattoos kind of as a reminder to like be yourself and at the workplace.

AUTUMN:
Because it's so easy to self abandon. Like we're trained as women to self abandon our needs and we're trained to like and I, I do like for, to take care of my kids and to make a living. Like I'll do whatever I have to do but like we spend more time at work than we do anywhere. You know what I mean?

ADRIANA:
Like yeah.

AUTUMN:
And with this RTO bullshit, they're gonna force us to work even longer. And they want everyone to work in person. Like, all the shit that we learned over Covid and everything, like, out the window. We've. We've literally were like, oh, we had better, and we don't want it now. What? Like, and I'm just like, I. I don't want to. And I mean, I've had those tattoos since I was 18, but, like, there's got to be, like, a balance of, like, I think especially, like, as moms and as women, like, we know that, like, you might cry, but you, like, put some, like, good music on that has bad words in it, and then you thug it out, like, after you cry, you know, like, you're like, oh, that was horrible.

AUTUMN:
Okay, let's get this done. At the same time, like, there's some things that, like, you only get one life, you know?

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

AUTUMN:
Like, and I want it to be, like, a good one, and I want it to have, like, good people in it, and I want to, in the best of my ability, provide for my children and. But create a good career that I'm, like, proud of, you know?

ADRIANA:
Yes, yes, I agree. Like, I. I used to go through the motions of. And actually, that's one of the reasons why I quit my tech job to become a professional photographer was because at the time, I hated what I was doing. Like, I was so bored in my tech job. I'm like, I need a complete change. And I'm at least super passionate about photography and a little bit obsessed. And it was, like, shiny new thing that I can put all my energy into and just made me genuinely happy. And when I came out on the other side and decided to go back into tech, I became, like, really reinvigorated by tech because at that point I realized realize, like, oh, I actually love tech. I was just not loving what I was doing in tech before.

AUTUMN:
Isn't it wild how you can get a job that feels like your dream job or that feels like the job you've always wanted and then you get it and you're like, what the fuck is this?

ADRIANA:
Oh, my God, that's happened so many times.

AUTUMN:
But nobody tells you about. Also, like, when you accomplish goals. Like, I think we all set out with, like, everyone tells you you have to make the first goal, right?

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

AUTUMN:
But nobody tells you about the almost loss of, like, when you get that goal and it's either not what you expected or, like, you get it and then you don't know what to do from there.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah, I. I have a horrible problem. And. And maybe you can relate as well where I accomplished something and I will celebrate for, you know, about five seconds. And then I'm like, I need to accomplish something else that'll top this. Otherwise I'm a failure.

AUTUMN:
It's so toxic.

ADRIANA:
And, and yet, you know, like, this is what drives me. And people are like, you're so successful and you're so motivated and look at you go. And meanwhile, I'm like, I'm, I'm like.

AUTUMN:
I feel like all the time. Yeah. It's chasing the high of accomplishment constantly and it's not, it's not healthy at all.

ADRIANA:
Toxic. This is why like over the break I've, I've had to like disconnect from. From social media. Like, the only social media I've been checking is my personal Instagram and everything else. Like, I, I have a friend yesterday, he's like, hey, did you see this post on LinkedIn where I tagged you? I'm like, nope. And he's like, but. And I'm like, yeah, I, I swore off social media for like during my break. Sorry.

AUTUMN:
Is a reminder of like the sunken place of tech right now. And it just gives me anxiety and I just, I can't with it right now.

ADRIANA:
I like LinkedIn but I, you have to kind of take it with a grain of salt because there's like. So I, I use it honestly. Like, I use it to like self. I use it for self promotion because no one gonna promote yourself but you.

AUTUMN:
But, no, but say that louder for the people in the back because women are bad at that. And it's the only way that you are going to make it. Like nobody gives a shit about your. And especially working in tech. Majority of it, especially if it's enterprise. Nobody's going to know you're doing cool shit because we're all under NDAs. So if you don't find something that you can make to talk about like that is a career hack, you have to learn. Like I'm terrible at talking about myself. You should see me trying to make dating app bios. I get ChatGPT to write them. Like, but like when it comes to being professional, you have to learn how to talk about yourself. That is a skill that you need.

ADRIANA:
It's so important. And, and I, I actually mentioned this in a talk that I, in a keynote that I gave recently about the importance of self promotion.

AUTUMN:
Because look at you keynoting over here.

ADRIANA:
Like, oh, first keynote. I was like, I was so nervous.

AUTUMN:
I so proud of you. Look at you.

ADRIANA:
Oh, thank you. As a sidebar on this keynote. So because they asked me to keynote, and I was going to give a tech talk. And I'm like, I don't want to give a tech talk at the opening of a conference. Like, I. I want to do something inspiring. I don't want to bore y'all to death. Right? But then I was, like, second guessing myself.

AUTUMN:
I don't think you could ever be boring.

ADRIANA:
Awww. Thank you.

AUTUMN:
I don't think you possess that, like, quality at all.

ADRIANA:
I am so glad to hear.

AUTUMN:
I think you'd have to try really hard, and you'd probably suck at it. It'd be the only thing you'd be better.

ADRIANA:
Oh. So at this. At this keynote, I was like, oh, I. I don't want to do, like, a tech talk. I want to do something inspirational. And then. And then I started second guessing myself because I'm like, oh, my God, of course the girl is going to do a non tech talk talk at a tech conference. This was like, me getting in my head, right? We. We love to get into...

AUTUMN:
But that is a struggle of trying to.

ADRIANA:
Such a struggle.

AUTUMN:
You have to, like, make that balance. Like, I've been trying really intentionally to not make any diversity talks in the next year or so because I feel like I had so many. Like, they were data talks. They were talking about data bias. It was a lot of. Yeah, yeah, DevOps. But it was also a lot of diversity. And I was like, oh, I don't want that to be all I'm known for, you know?

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I. I think that's. That's like, a fine balance, which is why I was, like, freaking out on this talk. Right? Because I'm like, oh, my God, of course they're gonna expect, you know, this from a girl. But I got like. But one of the pieces of advice that I gave in this talk is it turned into, like, basically, like, these are things that I've learned throughout my. What is it, 20+ years?

AUTUMN:
Those are the best talks. You were. You were channeling your. Any inner Kelsey Hightower. Okay.

ADRIANA:
Like, thank you. Yeah. So I. I shared. I shared this piece of advice of, like, you know, promote yourself. That it's. It's really hard, but, like, you know, you might have, like, amazing friends who will promote you as well, which is amazing. Like, I love it when that happens. But at the end of the day, you got to fight for your own, you know, for your own survival in. In the tech world.

AUTUMN:
I think that a lot of engineers are so introverted too, and they're not like, people-y.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

AUTUMN:
That, like, I know some brilliant engineers that are like, basically, like, beholden to like big tech companies because they really think that they can't do anything else. And I'm like, dude, you're so smart. Like, you could go anywhere.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah, I, I agree. And, and I, you know, I, I've learned for myself at least that my kind of tech company vibe is a company where I feel like I can be myself and swear freely. Like, I honestly, like, for me, the sign of a psychologically safe workplace is one where people will not look at me funny if I let out "fucks" and "shits" on a regular basis. And for me that's super important. I know it sounds, it may sound silly to some people listening who might be, oh my God, swearing in the workplace is horrible, but for me it's psychological safety because it means that I can absolutely be myself and that, you know, if I wanted to like, you know, do like, I, I don't have to suppress my personality because that's what I found in, in previous workplaces that I worked at a bank for 11 years. It was like, it was a personality suppression experiment is what it felt like to the point where I, I tried so hard to like, also fit in and be like one of the guys that I, I feel at the time I thought I was like, oh, I'm so cool, I can like banter with the guys. And, and I feel like I lost my, my own personality in that too, which is so horrible.

AUTUMN:
But that is so valid though. Like, I, Being an engineer was my dream and I left like being a solutions architect to be an engineer.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

AUTUMN:
And it was so toxic. Like, it was always like, you don't have a real CS degree and you don't have this and like, it's okay, but you don't because you don't have this and you like, or this and it was never going to be good enough. Like, nothing I did was ever, I wasn't going to be technical enough. And then it was funny, I interviewed for my new job and they're like, man, we can tell you're an engineer, we're going to have to coach you how to be a product manager. And I was like, what me? Like, I get told every day that I have to like, I'm too, too into process management and like to making processes better and I'm not technical enough. And it was wild how other people saw me because I was fucking miserable. I was oh so miserable. And I had people I loved working with, but I was never going to be good enough. And like, it's funny you said that you felt psychological safety with people that swear. But that's how I pick my mom friends. That's how I pick my tech friends. That's how.

ADRIANA:
Yes.

AUTUMN:
Look, I'm gonna learn how to run Kubernetes just to hang out with y'all, because everybody has tattoos, cool hair, piercings, and, like, that's. Look, when I walk into a room, I find the one mom that looks like she's just as unhinged as me. And I'm like, we have to be besties so we can survive through whatever this mom event is, like, you know?

ADRIANA:
Oh, my God. So relatable. I, I, I gotta tell you, like, I am, like, most parents annoy me, dude.

AUTUMN:
Nobody tells you. People tell you about the diapers. They tell you about, like, the. How they eat all your food and all this. No one tells you you have to talk to people that you don't want to talk to. Like, hopes for your child. Okay? Like, and my kids are such extroverts. And don't. Well, I don't know. My son's kind of an introverted extrovert, like my oldest. But, like, like, talking to parents because they just happen to have a kid that likes your kid.

ADRIANA:
Oh, my God, it's the worst.

AUTUMN:
Yeah.

ADRIANA:
And you don't have anything else in common. Or have you ever had the other one where, like, you love the parents, but their kid is a shit. Because...

AUTUMN:
Yes! Oh, my God. I'm just like, I just want to hang out with your mom. Don't terrorize my children.

ADRIANA:
I know. Yeah. I had to end some friendships with, like, parents I really like, because their kids are horrible, horrible individuals. And I'm like, how did you. How did you, like, spew out Satan's spawn? And how is it that you're nice and your kid sucks?

AUTUMN:
I do think it's mostly the parents because little kids are cute, right? Like, I can put up with a lot from a little kid because, like, for the most part, my kids are so, like, the, like, the, the little bit of me in them is so strong that for the most part that they'll probably just, like, sarcastically, like, bully the other one into, like, being nice, you know? And there's, like, three of them, and they run in a pack, so for the most part.

ADRIANA:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Nice, nice.

AUTUMN:
Like, they're only gonna get so far, like, you know, like, and then, like, I'm quick to be, like, the mama. Like, this one kid. Like, there's three kids that my, like, middle kid hangs out with, and, like, this one kid is, like, his parents are not the best. And his like, always like, he kind of is mean when the other two are getting along, you know, and he wants to say mean stuff. And he was talking shit to my kid and I was like, I can hear you. Like, I am such the asshole parent. Like, don't play with my kids. Like, yeah, yeah, I. And then like, I just always make sure that, like, it's always like a surprise and I'm like behind the bush. So that way, like, they like, are like, I'm like, I want you to think that I'm always watching and that I may always pop out somewhere. So, like, keep your little life together. I don't care if you're six. I'll come for you and your mama.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, you gotta protect your kids best interests. Like, I, I don't know. Like, there are some kids, like, maybe my style of parenting is, is very like, not normal for this day and age. I don't know.

AUTUMN:
But like, whatever it is, it's fire though, because you'd be doing all the things together. So like, look, I'm coming to you and my kids are teenagers. Be like, how do I make them like you?

ADRIANA:
Thank you. I. I was gonna say though, like, I. I don't know. Like, if. So, like, when Hannah was little, she was in a certain number of like, activities, like swimming and, and she did dance for a while. Like, we experimented with a few things, but after a while we're like, we just want our fucking Saturdays back, man.

AUTUMN:
Dude, my kids do jiu jitsu and that's it. Because one, like, it stops them from choking the of each other at my house. And two, I hate that. Like, look, I'm probably a bad mom because, like, I fucking refuse to have like eight different activities. I have three kids and like, people over schedule their children. Like, I don't want to. I have like two days off and I want to sit at home and be our normal little nerdy selves away from the world. And I don't want to talk to any. And I don't want to get rained on on a Saturday for soccer. Like, I live in Washington. I have black girl hair.

ADRIANA:
Oh, the humidity is our enemy. I. I have like naturally curly hair. I straighten it in the winter, but it's like full on curl in the summer.

AUTUMN:
See, you understand. I am not doing all that in the bathroom. And like, guilt. Yeah, you know it's hot when you're straightening your hair. You'd be dying the whole time. I'm not doing all that to come out and get rained on. Okay.

ADRIANA:
No, no, no, no. I. I am with you. I protect the hair at all costs. In the winter, like, in the summer. I gave. I give up. It's like, it's humid. It's. It is what it is. But, yes, I. I am with you. Like, I. You know, I, I. And I love that we're getting to talk about being a working mom in tech on here, because I think I had one other guest who I. I talked to about this, and I think we have to have more conversations about, like, you know, balancing that Also, like, there's. I don't know if there's such a thing as balancing. We survive. We survive as working moms in tech. We make it work.

AUTUMN:
I try to create some sort of a harmony because there's some times where my character is gonna come.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

AUTUMN:
Which I feel, like, bad. I'm quoting Amazon. Oh, like, PTSD is real. But, like. But it's true, though, because sometimes if you have to release something, I have to be like, I'm gonna order Doordash and everybody go play the PlayStation and let's just survive this. And then there's some days where my kids come first, and, like, I'm gonna have to dip out early, but I promise to work more hours later. Like, you just. They're like. It's just trying to keep it all together. Like, half the time, I just feel like I'm trying to survive.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

AUTUMN:
And, like, get it done.

ADRIANA:
I agree. I agree. Yeah. And you gotta. I mean, I. When. When my daughter was. Was really little and I. Her daycare used to be near my office. And I remember, you know, those early days where they pick up all the diseases. Like... How the hell, man?

AUTUMN:
I'm going through that right now.

ADRIANA:
I. Oh, my God. It's hard, right? And so I. I would, like, I had days where I'd literally, like, drop off my kid at daycare, walk into the office, get a call. Hannah's running a fever. We need you to pick her up. I'd be like, hey, guys. Bye, guys. Like, and I'd feel so guilty about. About that. Because...

AUTUMN:
You're feeling guilty. While you're the one that's in this horrible situation where you don't have to work from home and take care of a sick kid. You know what I mean?

ADRIANA:
Yeah. And meanwhile, you're, like, feeling like everyone's staring at you, like, oh, my God, she's not pulling her weight. Like, I always felt like I was getting, especially from my male co-workers. And it was like, it was so frustrating. And it's not that my husband didn't help, but he worked like, he. So I was lucky that Hannah's daycare was near my workplace. My husband worked, like, far away. He had to drive to work. I had the. I had the privilege of being able to subway to work from my place. He had. He had an hour drive each way, so it was like he couldn't be the one doing that, unfortunately. And so it fell on me. It's just, I was.

AUTUMN:
Statistically, women are always the ones that end up taking the flexible jobs over the greedy jobs. To the point where it got brought up in the. It's a Harvard economist. Her paper, she's a Nobel Prize rate winner and her paper about how to close the wage gap was literally having two partners that both took on the same, like, mental load and like, load for the house because she was like, we can do all the programs, we can do all of the things, but we will never close the wage gap without that. And it's like wild. Like, out of all the fancy ways that we've tried to solve that problem. And it's crazy because you're so right. Like, we don't talk about being a working mom and we can, like, and everybody, like, I don't know, the attitude towards kids now just is weird. Like in having kids.

I always feel like I have to apologize or like I'm lesser, you know, but look at where the world is.So it's like, what you said is so true. Like, if we don't make working mothers more of something that we see. Like, that's why, like, there's so many times where I wanted to give up on being an engineer or give up on being in tech, especially the last two years. And, like, yeah, representation matters, like, to little brown girls like me, because the only black engineer I ever saw for a long time was Angie Jones. Without Angie Jones, I wouldn't be here, you know? But also, like, I get questions all the time and they'll be like, can I be an. I did a Rewriting the Code thing, and they were like, can I be a mom and an engineer? And I almost didn't know what to say. And I want to tell her, yes, you can. But look at how toxic and weird is right now. Like, you know what I mean?

ADRIANA:
We should get paid more for. For juggling more stuff. Like, seriously...

AUTUMN:
In the age of AI, we're really going to fuck around and say that, like, techno, like, being technical is the only thing that matters, bro. Like, we're going to have so many things that can write code, but knowing if it's good code, knowing if that code is going to work, being able to talk to teams, being able to build relationships, that is what's going to set us apart. Being able to, like, work under stress, multitasking, being a mom, being an engineer are so intersectional. Like, what do you mean?

ADRIANA:
Big time. Big time. Yeah. And. And we gotta. We gotta keep having these conversations. We also, like, every time I talk to my American friends who are moms and hear about your maternity leave policies, girl, like, in Canada, I got a year off.

AUTUMN:
You had a year off?

ADRIANA:
Okay, I had a year off. So for my first, I want to say first, like, two or three months, I got 80, 85 or 95 pay from my employer. And then the rest I got. I was on unemployment and I was still guaranteed to get my job back when I came back after a year. And now they've upped it in Canada that you can be out for up to 18 months. And then I hear all the shit y'all get in the States. What is it, six weeks?

AUTUMN:
Yo. Okay, so the other day I was on TikTok and it was this thing and it was talking about how Vex or whoever and Elon said that Americans were mediocre. And this girl goes, if you're a black woman or any kind of a working woman in America. You know that they tell you that you have to do double of whatever you need to do to get a job to be able to get that job as a woman. And she goes, we continuously under fund. I'm an under fund education. We don't give people the chance to be with their children. We make people work, like, crazy hours.

They're working multiple jobs to try to survive in the economy. And he's like. And she's like. And you think that, like, we aren't going to get to the point of being mediocre, which I don't agree with, Elon, with the whole, like, we have to, like, I think he's going to use, like. I think one thing we don't talk about in tech enough is that he's going to use HB1 visas to abuse people. That is going to be the new form of, like, indentured servitude, where they're going to underpay people and they are going to absolutely abuse people that come here. So. And they're going to have to put up with it because it's their way to stay in the country and it's their way to support their families, and that's because they deserve better treatment and they don't deserve to be like.

Like, think about when Twitter went to shit. The only people in those pictures where he's talking about how they're staying 24 hours were people that were basically held against their will because they were on HB1 visas.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Yeah.

AUTUMN:
That is going to turn in the next four years. It is going to be the new version of indentured servitude where we can underpay people and treat them like. And like, people are blaming, like, immigrants in tech, like, and saying that it's their fault that Americans aren't getting jobs. No us allowing them to be abused and paid less and, like, working in horrible conditions, like, is going to be because Americans don't want it. It's just like, when we let people work in the fields because if not the flake, the food will rot.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, Yep.

AUTUMN:
And, like, if we don't stand up for them, whether it not, maybe it's not you, maybe it's not what you're doing, but if we just let it be, like, you're just as bad, you know?

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I. I totally agree. And I think that's a really important point to make. And especially, like...

AUTUMN:
We're literally watching it. When we were all hiring engineers at the former Non Company We Won't Name. They're not hiring white guys. They're hiring people that they know are young. All of them. Like, when you're at like 45% of new college grads for a major ginormous thing and they're all HB1 visas, it's because you know you're going to make them work a million hours, you know that they don't have families at home, and the way that they treat them is horrible, and it's not right. And we're just sitting here letting it happen.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, absolutely. I, you know, interestingly enough, I. I experienced like a smaller version of that to a certain extent. When I, When I had my first job out of school, I worked in consulting and they worked us to the bone. Like, I. My first role was like, I was working 7 days a week, like easily like 10 to probably like 14 hour days kind of thing for like, I think almost two months. And I remember like complaining to my manager. I'm like, I need a weekend off. And I was the only one who complained. And I felt like an idiot. I felt like, oh, I'm the whiny. Of course it's the girl who's whining. She can't hack it.

AUTUMN:
Definitely.

ADRIANA:
And I'm like, dude, I can't, I can't do this anymore. And. And I was going to complain with this other guy. He was, he was engaged and his fiancée's like, what the fuck, man? I never see you. And he was going to complain with me and he chickened out because he was too scared. And he was older. I was like a fresh kid out of school.

AUTUMN:
That's another thing. Women's rights, rights for minorities, rights for everyone. Like, if I have these two engineers on my old team and I remember when they start talking about RTO, I was like, dude, I can't be the only person that says it's bad, you know? And my senior engineer, who's like the most. One of the most seniors on our team, that was like a really good part of our release team. He was like, my wife is, you know, in school, my wife and me have two kids and we're sharing the load. And this is going to be like, really bad for my family. And like, people ask me all the time when I give, like, talks about women getting in tech and how we can get women tech, and they'll be like, well, what can I do to help? And I'm like, be the dude who says, I have to go to the vet, I have to take my kids here, I have to pick my kids up. Because when you make it not weird and we're the only people that are saying it, you make it so much easier for women.

ADRIANA:
It's so true. It's so true. Yeah. And that's another thing that comes up a lot is like, use your privilege.

AUTUMN:
Yes. It's like, people think it's not a big deal. It's such a big deal.

ADRIANA:
Such a huge deal.

AUTUMN:
Yeah.

ADRIANA:
You gotta. You gotta. You gotta show people that it's okay. Like, give them that psychological safety. It's so, so, so important.

AUTUMN:
For sure. I think that's the only way that we get through the next couple of years is, like, sticking up for each other, you know?

ADRIANA:
Exactly. Exactly. I love that. And I know I could keep going on and on, but we are coming up on time. But before we part ways, do you want to give, like, one either last piece of parting advice or. Or spicy thoughts on anything?

AUTUMN:
I think what we landed on was really good. Like, I think we all have privilege. I have privilege. The fact that I've gotten to have, like, rad jobs. Like, we all have privilege. Like, stop being an. And use your privilege to stick up for other people.

ADRIANA:
You know, I love that so much.

AUTUMN:
Like, definitely, like, after you climb a ladder, like, reach back and help somebody else climb too.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. I am fully with you on. On that, I think. You know, I. I've always said this. I keep saying it. We're all here because someone believed in us at some point in our careers.

AUTUMN:
And now that we don't have Twitter, Dude, Twitter was such a good way to meet people. I guess Bluesky's come in, but.

ADRIANA:
This guy's getting there, I think, which is nice. I'm. I'm. I'm kind of happy with how it's.

AUTUMN:
I'm really happy with it.

ADRIANA:
But, yeah, I. I agree. And the other thing, too, to add to that is I think we. Whenever, you know, you and I have talked about imposter syndrome before in other conversations.

AUTUMN:
So bad.

ADRIANA:
And I think, you know, like, I struggle with it still all the time, even. And. And the. The thing that I try to tell myself is, like, someone asked us to be here. Like, you know, when you were saying how you're getting shit over, like, the degree that you had and. And. And all that, and it's like, but you were asked to be where you were. It's not like you just. This job magically fell on your lap. Like, you know, like...

AUTUMN:
I still am. Like, how did I get this job there? Like, what if I don't do well, oh my God.

ADRIANA:
I have this constant fear. Yeah. What's the word?

AUTUMN:
What if they find out? Yes.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Yeah.

AUTUMN:
It was so fun.

ADRIANA:
Remember, you were asked to be there and I, I try to remind myself of that too. We were asked to be here. Someone believed in us and therefore we deserve to be here. And, and I think it's, it's on us to use our privilege also to, to help out those who are starting out in their careers, especially those of us who look like us, so that we can continue to inspire them.

AUTUMN:
At this point, we're going to even have to help out each other who's been in this career because look at how it is. Like people with 20 years of experience are having a hard time. Like it is wild how much we've all are just got to like stick together and like help each other, you know.

ADRIANA:
It's so true. And I'm very grateful, I have to say, for the tech community, definitely the tech community that I've found in the last, last, you know, like five years. I feel like it's been, it's been hiding where I've. I wasn't aware with a bit and I'm so grateful to have found it.

AUTUMN:
All you cool people have been hanging out in Kubernetes. That's what like the secret was. I was over there in like Java and like stuff and then all the cool people with like cool colored hair and tattoos were chilling in the Kubernetes.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, they were definitely not chilling in the banks. Either that or they were like hiding their cool sleeve tats under like the button up shirts and the, and, and the suit jackets.

AUTUMN:
Spending all that money just to cover up the cool art.

ADRIANA:
I know, right? All right, well, thank you so much, Autumn for geeking out with me today. Y'all. Don't forget to subscribe and be sure to check out the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media. Until next time...

AUTUMN:
Peace out and geek out.

ADRIANA:
Geeking Out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Villela. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking Out is also produced by my daughter, Hannah Maxwell, who incidentally designed all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the socials by going to bento.me/geekingout.

The One Where We Geek Out on Reinventing Yourself with Whitney Lee

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Adriana Villela, Hannah Maxwell, Whitney Lee) — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 05:00:00 +0000

About our guest:

Whitney is a lovable goofball and a CNCF Ambassador who enjoys understanding and using tools in the cloud native landscape. Creative and driven, Whitney recently pivoted from an art-related career to one in tech. You can catch her lightboard streaming show ⚡️ Enlightning on Tanzu.TV, and she also co-hosts the streaming show You Choose! - a 'Choose-Your-Own-Adventure'-style journey through the CNCF landscape alongside Viktor Farcic.

Find our guest on:

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show notes:

Additional notes:

Transcript:
ADRIANA: Hey, fellow geeks. Welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And Geeking Out with me today I have Whitney Lee. Welcome, Whitney.

WHITNEY: Hello. I'm so happy to be here.

ADRIANA: I am super excited that you were able to join and I want to get into this a little bit later, but we're like kindred spirits in some ways, like because we have photography in common. Although you did it way later than me. I mean, way longer than me. I'm super excited to have you join.

WHITNEY: Yay. I'm joining you from Austin, Texas.

ADRIANA: Awesome. So cool. So to get started, we are going to do some icebreaker questions.

WHITNEY: Bring it.

ADRIANA: Okay, first question. Are you a lefty or a righty?

WHITNEY: Presumably you mean which hand I write with. Not like which side of the bed I sleep on or I don't know which side of the car I drive on. I try to drive on the, on the right side when you do a steering wheel. So I'm, I'm right handed.

ADRIANA: It's funny because when I was.

WHITNEY: Yeah.

ADRIANA: Oh, go ahead. Sorry.

WHITNEY: Well, I write on the whiteboard as part of my, my job in the. It's switched in the camera. It's mirrored so it looks like I'm writing with my left hand to people. Yeah, but it's really just all mirrored. I'm writing like I'm not writing backwards.

ADRIANA: It's funny because I was actually going to mention that because when you had me on Enlightning talks, I, I messaged you just before it started. I'm like, are you a lefty? I get so excited when I meet other lefties. I'm like, there's more of us. And yeah, I was wondering actually about writing on the Lightboard also on. I'm like, are you like really good at mirror writing?

WHITNEY: It's hard enough to understand.

ADRIANA: Because it totally looks like that in the videos.

WHITNEY: Writing it backwards. Yeah.

ADRIANA: I hear you. Okay, next question. Do you prefer iPhone or Android?

WHITNEY: I am. I have given into the iPhone ecosystem and really like, it's kind of like all my family does it and I. So it's. I'm an iPhone girl. It's okay. No judgment either way though. Yeah.

ADRIANA: Yeah. My, my family is also like all iPhone.

WHITNEY: You get that one person in there who turns the, the chat green. They don't even know what they're doing.

ADRIANA: This is, this is what wars are fought over. The. The Green Bubble. On a similar vein. And I think I might know your answer. Do you prefer Mac, Linux or Windows?

WHITNEY: I. I use MacBook. MacBook Pros. Yeah.

ADRIANA: Speaking to a fellow fan girl. All right, next question. Oh, yeah, go ahead.

WHITNEY: I draw a lot. I've really gotten into the Procreate app. I guess it's on my iPad.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

WHITNEY: Still part of the Apple ecosystem. For a second, I thought it was any different. I'm not. Yeah, I'm a stereotype. It's okay.

ADRIANA: Apple all the way. Woop woop. Okay, next question. What's your favorite programming language?

WHITNEY: Oh, YAML.

ADRIANA: I'm sure there's some, like, YAML haters who'd be like, grrrrr.

WHITNEY: Well, my. My story is that I changed careers into tech relatively late in my life and relatively recently. Only, like four years ago now. Um, so I. When I. I went back to school and I went to a boot camp, and in the boot camp, I learned JavaScript. Like, for a year, I. I did like, it's called the MERN stack, but I can't remember what it all stands for. Now. The R is React. Yeah. And Node and Express. Okay. And the M is Mon. Mongo. Anyway, this is not interesting. Yeah. And so I spent. I spent like a year, like, eating, living. Living code in the MERN stack and learning how to be an application developer. And then I immediately got a job as a cloud developer and then never touched any of that knowledge ever again.

ADRIANA: YAML is your language. That's awesome. I do like YAML. I was actually, like, just before we did this recording, I was editing a JSON file and it was like, getting mad at me because the. The syntax checker was like, you need a comma. I'm like, god damn it. If it was YAML, this wouldn't be a problem. And also making me use quotes.

WHITNEY: Rude!

ADRIANA: Yeah, I know, right? Okay, next question. Do you prefer dev or ops?

WHITNEY: Oh, I get. I. You know, ops. Based on what I just said, I think you could get that.

ADRIANA: That's what I assumed. And I know the answer to this question. JSON or YAML?

WHITNEY: Yeah, you tell me. You tell me about me. I like this better.

ADRIANA: I know, right? Like, all your questions are like, already. Your answers are already answering subsequent questions. I love it. Okay, next one. Do you prefer spaces or tabs?

WHITNEY: Spaces. I prefer when my. When my YAML is structure aware. Spaces, whatever. Yes, yes.

ADRIANA: And then do you prefer to learn through video or text?

WHITNEY: Oh, ironically, since I make videos all day long, I don't I don't learn through video. I like text. Yeah.

ADRIANA: People have said to me, they're like, oh, you make videos, so you must like to learn through videos. I'm like, no, I like reading stuff. It's way faster.

WHITNEY: Very much. And I can go back over that. Like a video. Like the second I miss something, like when concepts are built on top of each other, the second you miss something or tune out for a little bit and try to come back, you've lost the context. And it takes a lot, it feels like it takes a lot of focus or like, or a good presenter who's always coming back and reminding you the context or like drawings or something to keep that context there. But yeah, it's easy to lose context in a video or a talk.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I agree. It's funny because, like, I keep thinking back to like my university days where, you know, like, if the professor was talking about something really complex and then like, you zone. It's similar thing, right? You zone out for a second and you're like, and, and you're screwed for the rest of the lesson. Unless, you know, you're bold enough to like, raise your hand and ask questions and if the professor doesn't flat out dismiss you. And, and, and I, I just keep thinking, I'm like, I, you know, if it were me going to school now, like, I, I don't know if I could do it. Like, I would just zone out so much. I'd be like, I need to like, have some sort of, you know, recording or some sort of, you know, proper record of the thing so that I could like, rewind. I'm like, sometimes I feel like I wish our brains could have like, you know, a just in time Google search on conversations or rewind on conversations. Because, like, I don't know about you, but for me, like being ADHD, I'll be like having a conversation and then I'll zone out. I'm like crap!

WHITNEY: What'd I miss? Oh no.

ADRIANA: I feel so terrible.

WHITNEY: Redoing the college years. Like, I might get distracted. But these days, like this version of Whitney, I don't mind seeming like I don't know or actually not knowing or admitting that I zoned out or just like being this like, like, like college version of Whitney would be very shy about asking that question. And present day Whitney would be like, that does. I don't like getting up and yelling. I don't understand. Explain it.

ADRIANA: I, that's such a great point. And I, I couldn't agree with you more. Like, past me would have been like, just terrified would just sit there in confusion. And now I'm like, I do. I. I've described it as like the Columbo thing where you're like, you know, like, just for my benefit, can you, like, explain this? Because I don't fully get it. And for you kids out there who don't know who Columbo is, link in the show notes. But yeah, yeah, it's, it's interesting how, like, wisdom and I don't know, like, just after a while you're like, I ain't got time for this. I just need to know.

WHITNEY: It's true. No time for my. Time for. I used it all up. It's gone now.

ADRIANA: That is perfect. I love it. Final question. What is your superpower?

WHITNEY: Oh, what's my superpower? I. I guess it's in line with, with not being afraid to ask questions or also maybe being super empathetic too. When I am a speaker, like, I'm making the talk that I want to hear. So it involves, it's really fast paced, it involves a lot of visuals, it has a lot of, A lot of context. So if you zone out, you, if you come back, you. You have stuff to bring you back and let you know where you are. Yeah, I'd say that's it. It's about it. I just don't care, so. I don't care how I seem, so I care a lot about doing my best.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

WHITNEY: But I don't care what people think because I know myself and I did my best. If someone's judging me after that point, then that's a problem with them and not a problem with me. Like, it. So what. What was my answer and all of that? I just blabbed a lot. I don't. Empathy combined with not caring what people think combined with storytelling.

ADRIANA: Yep. Yep. That's awesome. That's awesome. I love it so much. Yeah. And I, I think that's something because I think so many people in tech have, like, can be so self conscious of, of how they do. And I've. I've spoken to so many people, so it's so. I, I love it that you're like, yep, I did. I did what I could. I did my best. And that's. And I'm happy with that. And I think that's so refreshing.

WHITNEY: And my, my best varies from moment to moment. Like, I can see a video I made a year ago and it's a little cringy because I didn't know then what I. Something I know now, you know, but I know at that moment. I did my best, so I still can feel proud of that content.

ADRIANA: Yeah, that's actually, like, such a great way of looking at it. And it's also a really good opportunity to see, like, how much you've grown too, right?

WHITNEY: Yeah.

ADRIANA: Look at me now.

WHITNEY: If you don't cringe at your past videos, your past journal entries, just like your past stuff, then that means you're not growing fast enough. So true. It should embarrass you.

ADRIANA: Oh, my god. You mentioned journal entries, But I'm like, thinking back to when I was a kid rereading my journal entries, I'm like, ugh.

WHITNEY: That's great. You've come so far.

ADRIANA: Yeah, exactly. Cool.

ADRIANA: Well, we. We have completed the. The icebreaker questions, so I wanted to talk, you know, we. You alluded to the fact that you. You came into tech later in life. I want to talk about, like, what you were doing before and then what led you to tech. Tell us about your journey.

WHITNEY: Oh, buckle in. It's a long one. So my degree, I graduated in 2003. I'm 45 years old. I graduated in 2003 with a degree in fine art. And for a moment, I even had a bit of a fine art career. But at some point I was like, I actually need more money than what's happening right now. So I started a wedding photography business. And I'd already been doing wedding photography as. So my degrees in photography specifically as a side job while I was making art. And so I just focused all my attention on this wedding photography business. And I had a wedding photography business here in Austin, Texas for 10 years. It was a long time. And I think I've personally been to 500 weddings. And my company, all in all, photographs were like 1200 weddings or something ridiculous. Because I had other photographers who'd work, worked for me, but by the end of it, I hated it. I hated it so deeply. I cannot understate this.

ADRIANA: I can totally relate.

WHITNEY: Yeah, you said before that you've had a. A year's worth of wedding photography.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I did family photography, so. And, you know, like, hats off to you doing wedding photography, because I feel like that is like the ultimate stressful type of photography because you cannot up. You have to capture the perfect day for the bride and groom or else.

WHITNEY: Yes. And. And it's actually my first talk ever was called, "Codezillas; The Universal Truth to Building Trust". Because there is so much about communication and like, people are making different assumptions about what is what wedding photography, what their wedding photograph should like, look like. And some people want a documentary style and some people want these specific portraits. And if you don't get a portrait of just the bride and the groom at the front of the church, then you might as well not have photographed anything else the whole day. You know, even though you have beautiful portraits of them outside and beautiful portraits of each of them alone at the front of the church, this may or may not have actually happened. This is not a hypothetical. Anyway. It was. It was. And also, like the editing, the photographs. You take hundreds and hundreds of photographs on the day. Like, getting those down to the good ones and then editing those so they look nice. Like, that's very tedious work. And it's not interesting tedious. And it's not tedious but I'm growing. It's just tedious for the sake of being tedious. And. And once. And so I was either, like buried under a mountain of editing or buried under a mountain of communication of emails and then just general admin work. And I didn't feel like on top of my life for many years. I just always felt behind, like, I'm letting someone.

ADRIANA: I can so relate to all of this. We did it for a year. And I want to add also, I don't know if you felt this, but, like, considering, like, what you charged and the amount of time and effort you put into it, it felt like you end up getting paid, like, less than minimum wage.

WHITNEY: It's true.

ADRIANA: And then the other one, I tell me if this ever happened to you, the. But you took like hundreds of photos. Where are all of them? And it's like, yo, a bunch of them are crap.

WHITNEY: Yeah, you don't want to see all of them. You don't look good all the time.

ADRIANA: So mad they're like, what happened to all the photos you took? It's like, I promised you 100, you get 100.

WHITNEY: So. So I was stuck in the circular life of booking. When you book a wedding, you take half the money and then you get the second half when you shoot the wedding. And like, it's hard to break out because you. You're losing as soon as you stop. You stop getting booking money. But you still have to shoot weddings. So it's a circle that's hard to break. And so. So my. I have younger brothers, and one of my brothers, his name is Jordan, he is. He is a band called Mutual Benefit. So it's a musical project. It sounds like a whole band, but it's all. He does all the arranging. And then he might play all the instruments or hire out the ones he can't play. And so his album in 2014 got a lot of success. It got on, like, Pitchfork's Top New Music and Rolling Stone's Top 50 Albums of the year and this and that. And so it's mutual Benefit Love's Crushing Diamond is the album. So since this music is all was all just made by him solo, he needed to put together a band to go on tour. And he asked me to play in the band in 2014. Yeah. And so that was exactly, like, the excuse I needed to be able to get out of wedding photography without saying I failed. You know, I was like, oh, I got this cool opportunity. I have to do it. And so I spent all my savings returning those wedding deposit money. And then my partner at the time wasn't supportive. We'd been together eight years. I broke up with them, and then I put all my stuff into storage and I lived without an address for a year in 2014.

ADRIANA: Oh, my god. Wow. What instrument did you play?

WHITNEY: I played keys and I'd sing harmonies with my brother.

ADRIANA: Oh, that's so cool.

WHITNEY: Yeah. So that happened in 2014, and I toured for a year, and when I got back to Austin, I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, but I knew what I did not want to do with my life, and that is wedding photography. Wedding photography.

ADRIANA: So you. You had, like, you said you had, like, a whole company around this, so, like, you just shuttered the whole thing.

WHITNEY: Yeah.

ADRIANA: Like, and you had employees as well. Like, they were.

WHITNEY: They were independent contractors. So they. I would get them wedding business, but they could also get their own wedding business and they were able to. So I just stopped. Yeah second shooters.

ADRIANA: Oh, yeah. Okay. So the combination of, like, they'll. They'll do, like, they do primary or primary or secondary kind of thing.

WHITNEY: Yeah.

ADRIANA: Cool.

WHITNEY: And then, like, all my. All my photo gear is up in my attic collecting dust.

ADRIANA: Yeah. I haven't touched my camera in forever. I didn't have money to buy the lenses that I bought during my photography years. And now that I do, I'm like.

WHITNEY: I do think about getting a little camera that I can keep in my pocket when I travel, just so I don't need to use my phone. Like. Yeah, well, I could actually finally, like, use that knowledge that I built up. Like, I'm a master in this one area that I just don't do anything about. But anyway, so we're back. So I'm back from tour. Yeah, it's like 2015 now, and I am not a wedding photographer, but I don't know who I am. And so I was I drove for Lyft and Uber for a while, and then I worked at restaurants for a while. I was a server at like a. A fancy Japanese cuisine restaurant here in Austin. And then I switched to being a server at like a. A hippie vegetarian cafe, which is way more my speed. And then my son was in college and he was like, mom, he's in. In college for software engineering. And he's like, mom, you would really like this. You should try. You should try coding. It was 2019, now it's in January, and I write my very first line of code. All it is is an online introduction course to the program I went to called Hack Reactor. I'm not even sure if it survived the pandemic, but it had a pipeline to get you through. And I totally just wrote that first line and then I could ride the wave of what Hack Reactor told me to do next. So at first it was a. An online course that I was in maybe four nights a week for three hours a night or something like that for January. And it's like, oh, I really like that. And then they trained me up to pass their entrance exam and I did that. And then, then I had to do hundreds of hours of coding to get into the to pre course they called it. So I was accepted, but I had to complete this before I was allowed to start. So then in July of 2019 is when I actually went in person to the bootcamp right before the pandemic. We had no idea.

ADRIANA: Oh, my god.

WHITNEY: Yeah, So I was there 11 hour days, 6 days a week for 3 months. So, like in 2019, I really just like, lived in JavaScript and code. And then in October of 2019, I graduated. And in November of 2019, I was a cloud developer at IBM.

ADRIANA: Oh, wow, that is amazing. And did you love, like, the course, like those long days where you, like, was there ever a point where you're like, oh my god, why am I doing this crap?

WHITNEY: No, I loved it because I. I hadn't had a direction in quite some time, so it was nice to. To feel like I was doing something. And even, even with wedding photography, like, I don't feel like I was really stretching what I could do or applying my intelligence or like, you know, growing.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

WHITNEY: And so I. I was craving it. So by the time it came around, it was great. Although I will say, like, when I was in regular school, I was used to being an A student and I would work really hard to be an A student, and it was part of my identity that I'm like, I have good at school. And then I got into boot camp and I was not at all the best. I wasn't even. I was like medium easily, maybe slightly below. But that was because everyone else in the course had a lot more tech experience coming into it. And then we're all learning at a breakneck, breakneck speed once we're in there. It's not like normal school where you can spend extra time because there literally is no extra time.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

WHITNEY: But also, I think coding school taught me a growth mindset that I really didn't have before. I wasn't raised with the growth mindset. And so when I was. When I figured out to see the people around me with, who share my interests, these people are my community. They're not my competition. And that just, like, makes the world such a better place. It makes everything about life way better if you can shift your mindset from competition to community, the same people around you.

ADRIANA: Yeah, that is so true.

WHITNEY: Yeah. That's the big thing that. That bootcamp taught me that. And just like, you know, it helped me see what I'm capable of. But when I got that job as a cloud developer at IBM, I had no idea what I didn't know, which is a good, good thing. Like, I had no idea how complex and vast the world of cloud technology was and how little I knew about any of it. Like, the first I heard, the first I learned Kubernetes was in preparation for the job interview for IBM.

ADRIANA: Oh, damn.

WHITNEY: Yeah.

ADRIANA: And. And this was then, like, so outside of, like, what you had learned, though, in your coding boot camp, but I guess in a lot of ways, though, like, what you had picked up, like, you picked up some, like, you know, they weren't necessarily like, you know, the technical programming skills from the boot camp. I mean, you pick those up, but you're able to transfer, like the learning part of it to.

WHITNEY: To this. Right, exactly. Yeah. Learning. Learning how to learn.

ADRIANA: Yes, yes.

WHITNEY: And so. So at IBM, I build out, I was like, they hired broadly across from, like, either new college grads or new boot camps. Like, that was like their thing.

ADRIANA: Oh, cool.

WHITNEY: Killer role. Which meant I was like 20 years older than most other people around me, all of my colleagues, and just like one of just a very few number of women there. It was very different, but they. My job was to build out proof of concepts for potential clients using IBM technologies. And it was meant to be a travel position, but the pandemic happened, which. So it wasn't a travel position, but I had signed up to be gone like 70 of the time, which I was excited about. But later I was thankful didn't happen because for those type of jobs your travel is going to strip malls and suburbs and yeah, you know, it's not like, it's not like.

ADRIANA: What made you apply to IBM in the first place. Like having, having completed like the coding boot camp, going basically from the dev world to the world. Yeah. What, what inclined you to, to apply for that?

WHITNEY: I was going to say yes to literally anybody who took me had nothing to do with being interested in cloud or even understanding what it is. And if anything, because I clearly gravitate toward visual stuff, I thought DevOps would be bad for me because it's like I thought making applications where I'm interacting with visual components related to that application was going to be where I land. And so DevOps was just like, I'll do anything for my first year or two to get, get my foot in the door and then I'll figure out what I actually want to do. And so that's all I've applied to everything and I've been CS first.

ADRIANA: That's awesome. I love it. I love it. And did you find like, with your, with your background like being so artistic, did that help you with, with the tech side of things? Because I always like, I think in technology like there is so much creativity involved it's just not necessarily obvious to you know, the outsider who might, they'd be like, what do you mean? Creative.

WHITNEY: So those of you who are familiar with my work, I most things I do have some sort of big visual component. My talks, when I give them are almost animated. I have so many slides. I use GIFs, not GIFs like hand drawn GIFs that I drew. Like I hand draw like 100 slides and flip through them real quick and it's like, and then my, my show called Enlightening is a very heavily visual show. I have a Lightboard studio in my home and so but I didn't, when I started, I didn't realize that my visual part was going to come in handy. In fact, when I started I thought everything I've done in my life leading up to this point has been a waste of time because now I'm just doing something brand new and now I know that's not true at all. Like there are so many lessons I learned from before. Even lessons about communicating well with, with wedding clients very much come into play about communicating well about software delivery. So although all that stuff has been really useful and I'm glad for that and my, well, my rounded background has come in handy because I'm very different here. But I like how I'm different and I like how I can learn technical concepts but kind of come at them at a different way and teach them again in a way that's, that's unique, that's special to me.

ADRIANA: I love that. And you know, I gotta give a shout out to your Enlightning show because like when you had me on as a guest, like I am in awe over first of all, like you run such a well oiled machine so like hats off to you, like for real. But also like one thing that I really appreciate is like you are also taking this opportunity to like learn new things and, and you're basically like you're learning on the spot and you're demonstrating that you're learning because then you're regurgitating it back to your guest, which I think is so, so cool. And yeah, I just have so much admiration for, for your work because that takes a lot of, you know, like time and effort to put together and you're just nailing it.

WHITNEY: Thank you. So if you don't mind, I'm going to say what Enlightning is just for those people who are listening who maybe don't know Enlightning. It's a streaming show and on my show I want to learn about a concept or a technology. So I'll invite a guest on to be an expert. So you've been a guest on my show. It was a wonderful show about Observability 2.0. And so when the guest comes on and I know nothing about what they're going to teach, sometimes I know context because I've done related tools, but I basically don't know anything. And I start, I'm behind an empty light board and there the little square on the, on the screen and through words only, no demo, no screen sharing, they teach me about a technical concept and then I take notes and maybe draw diagrams on the, on the board as we go. So I can't pretend to know something I don't know because I'm actually held accountable by needing to write it on the board or capture the information somehow. And it's nice because it forces me to ask clarifying questions. I would write this on the board. Would you say it's true if I write this verb instead of this other verb? You told me. And we kind of get at the crux of maybe some confusing things without realizing you don't even know that you don't quite have the concept right in your mind until you try to write it down and you have the X. Yeah. But we end, we end up going from like zero to like good, good entry level knowledge within an hour and a half or two hour show. And it's really fun.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I appreciate too, that it, you know, there's like refinement along the way.

WHITNEY: Right.

ADRIANA: Because it puts, you know, your guest is, you know, forced to like, really think about what, how to communicate the idea because you're writing it down. So it's, it's basically like as a guest, you, your guests have to teach you and then you have to show that you've learned the material. So it's, it's like this mutual thing going on there that works extremely well. And I think also because you put your guests very much at ease, you have a very chill vibe on your show. Very much. Appreciate it. So y'all need to check out Enlightning.

WHITNEY: Thank you. Thanks. It's a blast to make and I feel so, so much gratitude that I get like masterclass lessons every week from people who are experts in their field.

ADRIANA: And do you run these like every single week or do you have like, periods where you're like, I'm going on a break? Like, how, how's that work?

WHITNEY: So I have another show called You Choose, which we'll talk about shortly. But I, I like to use Enlightning as a vehicle to get to know all the tools I need to know for you choose. So leading up to You Choose, I might do two Enlightnings a week for a while, but then, but then I'll go down to zero for a couple months. So it tends to be all or nothing based on what, what my personal learning needs to be. And right now I'm doing, I'm doing a whole series on Observability tooling. So I'm covering all the CNCF tools around Observability, and that's been really fun. And your episode really got me off on the right foot in terms of getting the context of everything that's going on. So I appreciate that.

ADRIANA: That's awesome. I got to ask, what gave you the idea of starting Enlightning in the first place?

WHITNEY: All right, I was at IBM. I was a cloud developer. Things are fine. I got, quote, unquote, promoted this. The. I was on the cloud pack acceleration team, but that got dissolved and I got quote, unquote, promoted to be a customer success manager. And customer success manager. I'm more man. They want me to more manage people teams to come in and implement solutions. But I'm, I'm really doing a lot of managing and not enough like tech hands on. I want to be technical and it's not a very technical position and so I didn't like that about it. Meanwhile, at IBM, I had found my way onto the IBM Cloud YouTube channel behind their Lightboard there. So if you Google what is RabbitMQ or what is Kafka, you'll see my, my, my face, my little, very young Whitney face telling you about that. But so at some point I realized like I like making these videos a lot and I don't like this new customer success success position I'm in. And I learned that there's such a thing called a developer advocate. So I started looking for developer advocate positions and I learned about one at VMware Tanzu and it required deep Kubernetes expertise. And I was like, I definitely do not have deep Kubernetes expertise. But I mean I want to apply anyway because I'll have some conversations, I'll meet some people, I'll learn about this idea of a developer advocate role. Like there's nothing to lose here. So I applied for the job and I met some wonderful people as part of the interview process and I did not get that job because I was under qualified for that job. But they liked me and my personality so much and the videos I'd made for IBM Cloud that they made a whole new job just for me on the team.

ADRIANA: Oh my god, that's like the ultimate form of flattery. That's so great.

WHITNEY: It's so nice. And they also bought the Lightboard Studio that you see behind me for me back then. So they hooked me up with the Lightboard studio, they gave me a developer advocate job and then they were just like, okay, now make some content. So at first after I got done being really flattered and shocked, then I was like, oh my god, what have I done? I have to make content. I don't know anything. So I just see, so Enlightning was a way of making my myself vulnerable and like having experts explain what their technology does to this really this woman who's really new actually, which is less me now. And back then I would be like, okay, what's a custom resource again? But anyway, that's how that got started because I needed a way to make consistent content as someone who was brand new. And then I conceived of Enlightning as a way to be able to accomplish that.

ADRIANA: That's so cool. And I want to switch gears a little bit because if I recall correctly, you were also recently part of like the first Platform Engineering Day colocated event. Is that.

WHITNEY: Yeah, I was a keynote speaker. Yeah.

ADRIANA: Yeah, you and Abby did that. I heard great things about the talk. I haven't caught it yet about. There was something about lipstick on a pig.

WHITNEY: It' called, "Sometimes Lipstick is Exactly What a Pig Needs". And it's about how and when to build different types of platform interfaces. The punchline is, you want to build an API, all your logic should be behind that API. That's your pig. And then whatever interface you want to put, the API could be a building block and then you could add your interface. That's the lipstick on the pig. That was. That was fun and an absolute gift to get to do that, especially with Abby. Abby is wonderful. I love, love, love Abby.

ADRIANA: Oh, yeah, she's great. I've had her on the show before and I, I keep joking with her, like, you know, we gotta play like Six Degrees of Abby Bangser her because, like, she knows so many people. She's recommended so many people for this show in particular and so many other people know Abby, I'm like, oh, my god.

WHITNEY: And you should see her. Yeah. At KubeCon. She doesn't sleep. She has someone to see. She's at morning Coffee, Platform Coffee. She closes down the bar at night. Yeah.

ADRIANA: Yeah. That's awesome.

WHITNEY: It's impressive on so many levels.

ADRIANA: Absolutely. And so, so for like the Platform Engineering Day, were you, were you also one of the organizers for that or.

WHITNEY: No, no, I just. No, I just showed up. I gave my talk. It was great though. Props to the organizers.

ADRIANA: Yeah. These things take a lot of, A lot of effort to put together. I tell you. I've assisted in putting together KubeHuddle here in Toronto. You know, I, I was not a. I would say, like, I was not the main organizer, but it was still a lot of, A lot of work to put together. So hats off to folks who to organizers, like, oh my god, like anyone who works like KubeCon. Like KubeCon organizers. Holy cow. That's like. That's like rock concert level event. I tell you.

WHITNEY: It's impressive. So far it's not something I've had the urge to do in any way, shape or form. I think it's a little similar. T oo close to Weddings that it makes.

ADRIANA: A little bit of PTSD there.

WHITNEY: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I feel.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I feel you.

WHITNEY: But if it's okay, I'd love to talk about the other show. You Choose. Since I mentioned it. Is that all right? Yeah, you know about You Choose?

ADRIANA: No, I don't. I've heard of it and that's the extent of it. So, yeah, please enlighten me.

WHITNEY: Okay, so you choose is a show I co-host with Viktor Farcic on his YouTube channel, which is called DevOps Toolkit. And on You Choose. We start with application code on a developer's laptop, and we need to help that application navigate its way through the entire CNCF. And so each episode represents a different system design choice. And so the very first episode, for example, was building a container image. That's what we need to do with this source code on a developer's laptop. So then we gather all the relevant CNCF technology that can do that thing, and then we have a guest on that represents each technology. Usually a maintainer, but it could be an advocate or super user or something too. And each presenter, each. Each expert gets only five minutes to present about their technology because we just want to know the basics of what it is. We don't want to. We don't want all the bells and whistles, in fact, that can get confusing when we just need to know what it does. And so then we have a question and answer part of the show, and then we put it to a vote, and we ask the community to vote about which one they want to see implemented into our ongoing demo. So the one that got chosen, we try not to say one, sometimes I slip. The one that got chosen, not the one that won, but the one that got chosen was buildpacks. Cloud native buildpacks. And so at the beginning of the next episode, we implemented buildpacks into the ongoing demo. And then the episode itself was about container registries, which different container registries in the CNCF and how they're different from each other. So it's a comparative view of different technologies with a little bit of, like, competitive twist. Even though we try not to make it competitive, that little. It's a little there. And it's a really nice. It's a really nice overview of how different tools work together in the cncf.

ADRIANA: So it's like a little choose your own adventure kind of thing while you're building.

WHITNEY: Exactly.

ADRIANA: Mega example.

WHITNEY: Yes, exactly. In fact, we, we, we conceived of it because we wanted to do a choose your own adventure style talk for KubeCon. And we did. And, and, and then we're like, well, this is. We're gonna. So the, the very first choose your own adventure talk we did for KubeCon was from the developer's laptop through to a development environment and that we came up with seven different system design choices, if I recall correctly. And we're like, oh, there's a lot of projects we need to learn about in time for KubeCon, so let's make this into a streaming show. Yeah. To help us get organized.

ADRIANA: Right. So great.

WHITNEY: And so that we've been. We've been at it for a year and a half, almost two years, I think. So we did. We call them chapters because of the choose your own adventure thing. So chapter one is from source code to a developer's laptop. So it's like building container image configuration. Well, there's only cert manager, but we have one for HTTPs, adding a database, that sort of thing. And then development environments that run on Kubernetes themselves. And then our second chapter was getting it from a development environment to a production environment, which is actually a very short chapter because production doesn't have all the things production needs to be production. It's just on that for that chapter we covered GitOps and declaratively defining a cluster, how you're going to do that with infrastructure as code and oh, ingress, we covered on that one. And then chapter three was all about security. Then we added security to our cluster and that one had like 10 different system design choices and went through all the different security projects in the CNCF. And now we're doing Observability and that's coming up. We're going to start that the first week. The first Tuesday of September.

ADRIANA: That's so cool. Yeah, that's very exciting. Wow. And so like when you. Your own adventure talk, then did you have audience engagement then to sort of help define the direction of. Of the talk as it was going? Is that the idea of it?

WHITNEY: That's a great question. Yes, we absolutely have live voting during our talk. And Victor, I do all the exciting explaining of each of the system design choice, like why the system design choice and then all the tools and then what differentiates the tools from each other. And then Victor does the. Then people vote and Victor does the live demo based on people choose in real time. Yeah. During the talk.

ADRIANA: Kudos to both of you, that is. That is a lot to. To do. That's a lot of pressure. Makes for a great talk though. It sounds, it sounds really fun and engaging.

WHITNEY: It's really fun and funny. And we, we just, we presented the talk at different KCDs or Kubernetes Community Days over the summer. We did three of them and on the one in Zurich, Victor completely crashed the demo. Like everything. He didn't get a single, a single thing right. But it was still really fun and informative and people, like, people even asked us afterward, like, did we crash it on purpose? I was like, I don't know to what end we would do that. Like, why on earth, what we would be hoping to achieve. But like, we took it in stride and had so much fun with it that they, they didn't, they didn't understand that it was definitely not on purpose. They thought maybe we meant to do it that way. Yeah.

ADRIANA: Very cool. And I, I wanted to ask, like, you know, you're. You're obviously like, very comfortable doing talks and, and whatnot. What, what was your, what first got you on the speaking circuit? Like, where. When did you go? Like, hey, I want to try this out?

WHITNEY: Well, when I got the job as a developer advocate here at VMWare Tanzu, I got the job thinking I was going to make a bunch of Lightboard content. And then once I got here, then I realized that there's a big speaking engagement part to it too that like, all of my co workers on my small team are all speaking at conferences. And then. And so one of them in particular reached out to me about us making a talk together. And so I just. Yeah. So the. I feel like I just rode the waves and that's where they took me. I didn't set out to make to be like, oh, I need to be a speaker now. But I just, it was just like such a natural part of, of the job that I just moved right in. Yeah.

ADRIANA: That's awesome. And plus, like, you get to use your, your extreme creativity as part of it, which is so cool.

WHITNEY: Yeah. And even the, the musician part of my background, like, I have practice performing, so the biggest crowds, yeah, they were scary at first, I'm not gonna lie. But they're what I got. Maybe got over it a little faster since.

ADRIANA: Oh, yeah.

WHITNEY: Performance practice.

ADRIANA: Yeah, it all goes back to, you know, the fact that all of the things that we've encountered in our past, no matter how insignificant they seemed at the time, like they helped build us into what we are today.

WHITNEY: A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Don't discredit anything you've done in the past. It all, it matters more than you realize. It all comes together.

ADRIANA: Absolutely. And also, I want to mention that, like, there's. It's funny because, like, I'd say, like, traditionally, I think a lot of people tend to assume that you have to have like a degree in like, computer science, computer engineering to be in tech. And, and I've had The pleasure of meeting so many people who, you know, that wasn't their original background, where they either got into tech by, you know, they were self taught or they attended a boot camp. And it's just so cool to see the diversity in these backgrounds and these types of people bring so much into tech and you know, that cannot. Like, it's so underrated and I think it needs to be. We need to remind folks like it's, it's tech is, is awesomely inclusive in that respect.

WHITNEY: I love that about it. Yes. I love it so much. I, I am surprised how much I love DevOps. Like, I really thought getting that first job out of bootcamp that I would do DevOps a couple years and then get somewhere more interesting. I did not expect to absolutely fall in love with DevOps and with the community. It's the best.

ADRIANA: I totally agree. DevOps is lots of fun. I found in my career was like the thing that was missing throughout my entire career. It's like, where have you been all my life?

WHITNEY: Do you think it's the technologies or the people or both?

ADRIANA: I think it's both. I have to say that initially it was definitely the technology that attracted me to it. And I started out in my tech career was very much in the corporate enterprise world, you know, very prim and proper and you know, I got in trouble for swearing at the office and it was like business casual attire. So I only saw the technology side. I really saw it as like a technology thing. And then as I've gotten more into the open source world, I have been so lucky to like meet so many people like you and others who have been on my show with different perspectives who are like such chill vibes and, and more most importantly for me, like meeting other women in tech because I feel like most of my career has been like just surrounded by a bunch of dudes in tech and like be able to collaborate with, with so many women and, and on my show I've had so many women in tech, which has been fantastic.

WHITNEY: I love that.

ADRIANA: Yeah, for me, like that that's just the ultimate thing. So, you know, in the end the, the, the people end up trumping the technology because they have so much, so many different cool perspectives to bring and then they lead me to, to like other avenues of technology.

WHITNEY: Kudos to you for bringing, for highlighting so many women voices on your show. I love that.

ADRIANA: Oh, thank you. Well, we are coming up on time, but before we wrap up, I was wondering if there were any parting words of wisdom that you wanted to share with folks in our audience.

WHITNEY: I'll no pressure. I'll. I'll restate what I said earlier in the episode because I think it means a lot if you see the people around you who are interested in what you're interested in as your community and not as your competition. It makes your life a much more joyful and peaceful and happy place.

ADRIANA: Absolutely. And I, I think these are excellent words to, to part with and, and I hope everyone takes this to heart because it really, it just makes the work a lot better that way.

WHITNEY: Absolutely.

ADRIANA: Well, thank you so much, Whitney, for geeking out with me today. And y'all, don't forget to subscribe. And be sure sure to check the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media. Until next time...

WHITNEY: Peace out and geek out.

ADRIANA: Geeking Out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Villela. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking Out is also produced by my daughter, Hannah Maxwell, who incidentally designed all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the socials by going to bento.me/geekingout.

The One Where We Geek Out on Mobile App Observability with Austin Emmons of Embrace Mobile

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Adriana Villela, Hannah Maxwell, Austin Emmons) — Tue, 28 Jan 2025 05:00:00 +0000

About our guest:

Austin Emmons is an iOS Developer at Embrace Mobile, a company that works on Observability for mobile applications and beyond. Austin has been developing for Apple platforms since the early iOS days. Outside of tech, he enjoys mountain biking, rock climbing, and taking his dog, Nacho, on new adventures.

Find our guest on:

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show notes:

Additional notes:

Transcript:
ADRIANA: Hey, fellow geeks! Welcome to Geeking out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And geeking out with me today, I have Austin Emmons. Welcome, Austin.

AUSTIN: How's it going?

ADRIANA: Not bad. Super happy to have you here.

AUSTIN: Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

ADRIANA: And where are you calling from?

AUSTIN: I'm based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

ADRIANA: Awesome. Well, are you ready for the lightning round questions?

AUSTIN: Yeah, let's do it.

ADRIANA: Okay, first question. Are you a lefty or a righty?

AUSTIN: Righty.

ADRIANA: Okay. Do you prefer iPhone or Android?

AUSTIN: I'm an iOS developer, so iPhone. I get tempted every, every time Google comes out with a new Pixel. I'm definitely tempted, but I have to say iPhone.

ADRIANA: Cool. Do you prefer Mac, Linux, or Windows?

AUSTIN: Mac my entire life. And I got made fun of a lot in college when I showed up to computer science with a MacBook and I was just like, well, I'm, I'm, I'm dual booting Windows when I need to, but I would get out of that as soon as possible because I just, I would. Yeah, I had to hack together a lot of stuff just to get Java compiling and everything. And that was, that was fun. But yeah, definitely Mac.

ADRIANA: Oh, damn, that's so cool. Yeah, I don't know, like, when I was in university, if there was like any. Anyone I ever saw with, actually. So when I was in school, there were very few of us with laptops and certainly not, I don't know of anybody who had a Mac at the time because I think they were like, also so expensive.

AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah, no, I, I cut a lot of lawns the summers prior to save up for the first Mac. And when I say hack together some stuff, I just had to, you know, look on the other side of the Internet, I guess, to figure out the. The instructions did not come in the course syllabus like it did for everybody else.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's so cool. Okay, next question. What's your favorite programming language?

AUSTIN: Swift. I really like. It's, it's, it's strict, very strict, but it's also very expressive. And if I need to write something quick or for some personal projects, Ruby would be my, my go-to. I've had a prior life as a Rails developer where I learned a lot of the server side stuff and so Ruby really, you know, opened my eyes to that. Yeah. And yeah, I find like throughout my career it's either like you're a Python shop or a Ruby shop. Somehow I've thread the needle to lean on the Ruby side of things, and now I'm at a Python shop. But I'm an iOS developer, so I don't have to focus on it too much.

ADRIANA: Oh, that's so interesting. It's funny, I've had quite a few Ruby folks on this podcast and the thing that I always find with the Ruby folks is that they really, really love Ruby, which I think it's so cool. I think it speaks to the community.

AUSTIN: It's a. It's just like, it's just simple to me. I don't know, like it just clicks of, okay, that makes sense. And it's maybe not as powerful, but the community for sure is there. Like, it's amazing. And then when you want to tear open somebody's gem or somebody's work, you. You can. And so, yes, it's open source to the fullest, I think, which is awesome.

ADRIANA: That's very cool. It's funny, I was talking to someone because I. You. You were talking about like, you know, as Ruby being your go to if you want to like, throw something together quickly. And I actually had a very similar conversation with someone last week about this. Also interviewing for the podcast and she was saying like, you know, she knows a bunch of languages, but like the one that she always comes home to is, is Ruby. So I thought that was interesting and it's kind of cool hearing it from two people now.

AUSTIN: Yeah, I mean, recommend it to anybody that's trying either getting into programming or even if you've been a seasoned programmer, just try it out. It'll change how you think about programming. But that's any language. If you try out a new. That's what I love about kind of taste testing new languages. It's just like, okay, how do you do a for loop? Even that could be so different. And it's still for loop, but it's just good enough. And Ruby, for me, it was actually the innumerable like package or, you know, they have so many tiny little algorithms or methods that you can use just to map and all those. It's like that was a whole new introduction to me of like, oh, one, I get these for free. That's awesome. One. And then again another, I can chain them together and really do what I need to. And now I go to other languages and I. That's like the first thing I ask for. Look at, it's like, okay, now I need to get back into that more functional type of programming.

ADRIANA: Right.

AUSTIN: Even though Ruby is. Is very object oriented. So, yeah, it's, it's a good language.

ADRIANA: Cool. Yeah. And to what you were saying earlier too, I think it's interesting. Like, I think one of my favorite things about like tackling new languages is that compare and contrast. Right. Because you already, you have the experience like of a base language and it's always so interesting to see how different languages approach different things and how they have their nuances and, you know, if they're more verbose than other languages you've worked with and whatnot.

AUSTIN: Yeah, I, I mean for most of my career I actually had to straddle iOS and Android and that was very similar. Where it wasn't just I'm working in two different languages and I have to compare and contrast. Java at that point and Objective-C on the iOS side. It was actually the platforms themselves. It's like, okay, how do I show full screen content? You know, iOS you call it a view controller. Android, you call it an activity at that point. You still can, but they've kind of shifted the thinking to fragments and, and compose now. And so it's like you had to stay along and be up to date with every change that the platform developers were making on top of the changes of the language. And I would always implement the same feature two or three times where it's like, implement it for iOS first. Okay, that works. Have to implement it for Android. It's the same feature but I have to do it slightly differently. But I did it in a way that I have this experience that I like a little more. Okay, what can I take from that Android side and actually come back to my iOS implementation and improve that a little bit. And if you have the time, that's really beneficial because it just stretches your brain out and yeah, I couldn't recommend it enough.

ADRIANA: That's awesome. That's so cool. So I'm, I think I know the answer, but what, what do you prefer developing on more iOS or Android?

AUSTIN: You know, I recently had, it's iOS but I recently had some work to do. It's probably a year, year and a half ago in Kotlin on Android and I had stepped away from Android for probably three or four years and then come back to it for just a really quick two or three month project, and I loved it. Kotlin and, what they've done, it's just, I don't know, so much more intuitive than Java. It really feels like it is a first party product. In the early days of Android, when I was in my early days, I guess you could feel that it was an open source project and you could feel that the design patterns that they were using were different depending on what part of the platform you're working in. Whereas iOS was, everything is very cohesive. You know the Apple platforms and the frameworks, they provide very common design patterns. And so you knew like it, you felt used to it even though you had never seen this before. So you know, transitioning from requesting some the device location to the device motion, you know, it's almost identical code. On Android, there might have been separate patterns that used and so I think nowadays Android has leveled up and those design patterns are more similar or at least maybe it's just the entire community developing these packages have everybody's leveled up and come together on how they like Android code to look right.

ADRIANA: Oh cool, that's awesome. Definitely seeing an evolution in the right direction on that one.

AUSTIN: Yeah, just established patterns I think would be the, the best way to put it is like those have started to actually like solidify and take shape. And I mean, nowadays it's 10 years, almost 15 years for these platforms. So they're, they're getting up there in terms of the maturity which is interesting. And now we have new stuff to go work on and we'll see what the next frontier is, I guess.

ADRIANA: That's very cool. And by the way like I, I, I want to go back to like your mention of Kotlin. So my dad is, he's like a software architect and he's retired now but he has been like a huge proponent of Kotlin forever. So he always like goes on and on about how much he liked and he was like an early adopter of Java. And then his, his thought around Java was like oh it's, it's like it's an anti pattern to programming just because you know, Java is like so, so verbose and so like heavy. And then when he, he, he did some, some Kotlin for, for some work that he was doing he would just go on and on and on and on about, about Kotlin and how elegant it is. So anyway, it made me maybe think of, of that comment that he made once you mentioned your, your Kotlin work as well.

AUSTIN: Yeah, it's very similar to Swift too. There's, there's just going back to that, just that tiny comparison to the subtle nuance. It's, it's amazing like, and I can't think of like a good example. It's, but it's like the day to day stuff that you run into of just declaring a variable or you know, describing something as being lazy. It's like this is a pattern that has been well established in programming for years and now they've just made it a concise little keyword. And that's fantastic that it shows the evolution and it's again very expressive language, very type safe and just, you know, has null safety as well. So just a very safe language for. It's just, it's just helpful. Just the language itself is helpful, which is great when you're a developer and that's the tool you're using.

ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. Very cool. Okay, next question. Question. Do you prefer dev or ops?

AUSTIN: Probably dev. And yeah, there's. It's tough because I want to build a new thing, but that thing also has to exist once I, you know, we put it out and, and maintaining and managing that is, is a whole different beast. But yeah, I would say building new features, working on new tools, trying to take the technology that we are given by these platform developers or these bigger corporations and put them together in new and different ways or just even just playing around with somebody's open source project that's new and different. It's like, okay, does this inspire me? Is this interesting? Is this useful? Can I use this on my day to day? That is a lot of fun and the hope is to be able to contribute back and put something else out there that somebody else finds interesting and useful and they can use on their day to day. And so yeah, for me, definitely just the development side of it.

ADRIANA: Cool. And on a similar vein, similar ish, I guess. Do you prefer JSON or YAML?

AUSTIN: For. Well, it depends what we're doing for config files. YAML 100% of the time. That's the Ruby and me, I think that was part of the Rails development is all. It's all YAML config for APIs and sending data to a server to a back end, it's all JSON and I don't know if anybody's used YAML on that side of it yet. That would be. I'd be curious to come across that.

ADRIANA: Awesome. Also, do you prefer spaces or tabs?

AUSTIN: Spaces. Yeah, I know they take more space.

ADRIANA: I'm part, I'm part of Team Spaces, recent converts. So I'm. I'm down.

AUSTIN: Yeah.

ADRIANA: There's something. They're a lot more consistent too. Like you, no space in one OS is going to be the same as the other OS.

AUSTIN: And well, I don't know if this makes me weird or not, but I need my tabs to be converted to spaces. I hate the space score six times. Like, if I'm in a text editor where I have to space out my indentation, I would go nuts. And so I'm sure no one is doing that, but I don't know when I have to, like, format something in Slack to send a code snippet off or something, and I find myself counting spaces, making sure they all line up. I'm like, all right, maybe. Maybe I should just move to tabs.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I know what you mean. I have my VSCode configured to convert the tab key to spaces, so I'm totally down. Okay, two more questions. Do you prefer to consume content through video or text?

AUSTIN: Video, I would say. I even. I'm not a reader. I. But I. I recently got a library card and signed up for Libby, which is a great app if. If people haven't checked it out. But I stick in the audiobook section. And so I am listening to stuff as I'm walking the dog or, you know, prepping to get. Get to bed or something. And video is. Is kind of analogous to that where it's like, I need to be told and shown. Diagrams are fantastic, and straight text just. I find myself catching every, like, sixth, seventh, tenth word. It's kind of spaces out the longer the document. And then I'm just like, wait, I need to go back and. And reread all of this. So I don't know. I just have zero attention span and for. For words. And that's just practice. But, yeah, I don't know. I think my mom would say.

ADRIANA: I was gonna say it's interesting because, so my daughter, she's in the same boat. She'd rather do, like, video over text. And she's also, like, not a. A big reader. And she got a lot of flack from people like, oh, you need to, like, you need to love books. Why don't you love books? And it's like. But she consumes all her stuff through video, so who cares how she gets her information as long as she gets her information? So...Yeah, exactly. And I think, like, people get too hung up on. On, like, how you're getting your information. It doesn't matter, like, because we all learn in different ways. So. Yeah, I. I just want, like. I think it's important to remind folks of that because people can get so judgy over stuff like that, you know?

AUSTIN: I do. There is, like, There is a really big sense of accomplishment when you close a book and it's the final page. It's just. I don't know what else does that. I mean, finishing a video game. You know, I've been watching a lot of Elden Ring because that's a new big game and, and it's just amazing that like, oh, I got to the end of that. It's just this massive epic. And so books. Yeah, there's. There's nothing replaceable about a physical book.

ADRIANA: Yeah, true. I, I definitely agree. Although, like, I don't think I've. I hardly have any physical books in my possession anymore. I might have like five. Everything now is, is like on my, on my Kindle just from the space perspective. Like, I just don't have a spot in my house to keep so much stuff. I had to get rid of a lot of my physical books a long time ago.

AUSTIN: I, I think once I have a place that I know I'm gonna be in for a long time, then I might start accruing some of it. But just moving, I've had to move two or three times in the last six years and, and it's just awful to have a box of books that weighs 50 pounds down the stairs. Let's go.

ADRIANA: So, yeah, moving in itself is like a very awful experience. Like even from a small place where you're like, nah, I don't have that much stuff. And then you're like, where. How have I been keeping all this crap for so long? Where has it been hiding there?

AUSTIN: In college, I did have a roommate that I lived with. It was just him and I and we lived on this fourth floor of the walk up. And there was a really heavy box that I help him move up the stairs. And I dropped it in our kitchen when we got to the top. What the heck is in this? Is it just weight? Like, this is just dead weight? What the heck is it? And he just looks at me. Oh no, that's my weight set. And it was just of little like dumbbells and all this stuff. The only time it got carried in the two or three years we were there is when I moved it up and then moved it out. He didn't use it at all. I didn't use it at all. And I was just like, you just gotta get rid of this. This is not going in the truck.

ADRIANA: Oh my God. Yeah, that's the, that's the worst. I, Yeah, I have. I, I bought a. One of those weight sets. You know the ones that you like turn a knob and it'll like, it's.

AUSTIN: Oh, very cool.

ADRIANA: And oh my God, when it came in the mail and my I, I work out in, in, in this room, which is like on the second floor of my house. When it came in the mail, I'm like, how the hell am I gonna carry this thing? Because I, I think like, each dumbbell is like 50 pounds or some ridiculous weight like that. So I, I, I think I either asked my husband. Yeah, I think I asked my husband. I'm like, you do it. Use your manly strength, please. I can't do it.

AUSTIN: Get two people. It's like moving a couch at that point.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, that stuff is heavy. Okay. All right. Final question of our lightning, not so lightning round questions is, what is your superpower?

AUSTIN: Oh, man, I don't know what direction I want to go. I, I have a, like, probably like seeing ahead, maybe seeing the future. If I had a superpower. I'm, when I played sports or something, I always had a knack for just knowing what was going to happen before it happened. And just, just like the vision, I guess, is, you know, in sports as well, you have to kind of skate to where the puck is going, as Michael Scott says, and just being able to play. You know, I played soccer mostly, so playing the ball into space to let people run onto it was really important. And that's carried through into technology of just knowing, oh, okay, this, I, I can see the development happening here. This is kind of the direction it's going. So maybe I should meet up with it up ahead. And that can be really, really useful. You know, sometimes you say, I'm going to meet up with it here, and it's, it's taking a 90 degree turn in a direction away from you, and you're like, I'm in the middle of nowhere. So it's not 100 of the time, but I think just having an understanding of, okay, this is kind of shaping up. Yeah. Let me, let me, you know, get ready for the next, the next act. And so, yeah, that's, I mean, I would love, you know, freeze rays or flames or something physical as well, but something cerebral would be, would be very cool as well.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, that, that's a great superpower because. Well, especially in tech, like, I, I think there's some technologies where you're kind of like, I feel like this is going somewhere. It's, it's good to start investing now. Right?

AUSTIN: Yeah, it's, it's, hopefully it works out. I guess you just kind of try to fire off a bunch of ideas to see. Okay, yeah, that could work.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

AUSTIN: And that's what I like too.

ADRIANA: Awesome. Well, we've, we've survived the lightning-ish round questions. Not so fast, not so fast. Lightning round questions. So now onto the meaty bits. So you work at Embrace and if you can explain what is it that Embrace does, that would be super cool.

AUSTIN: Sure, yeah. Just quickly it's. We're an Observability product and we focus mostly on mobile platforms. So Android and iOS we have SDKs for React-Native Unity. We have some clients that are in the game space, but those games are mostly on iOS and Android. And we've recently gone open source, which is, was a big shift in the company to, to kind of come out of the shadows. But even on top of that we've also converted the foundation to be in OpenTelemetry, which is really exciting. OpenTelemetry is kind of a new standard, new ish standard for Observability and it isn't really practice in the mobile space. And so we're excited to hopefully get a lot more people in the mobile space to, you know, join and kind of share their ideas and explore this new standard for what's possible. So I am the one of the lead iOS developers on the team, so I'm focusing mostly on the iOS SDK. But we have, you know, I work very closely with our Android team to make sure that we're both at least following the spec somewhat together as we kind of work through it. Which is, which is fun.

ADRIANA: Cool. That's so awesome. And so when you mentioned that Embrace made the shift to open source. Was it just a matter of like, okay, we're opening up our code base. Did you do like a major re-architecture? Because you also mentioned that you did some like OpenTelemetry integration as recently. Was, was it part of that move to open source as well?

AUSTIN: Yeah. So on the iOS side it was a re-architecture situation, the conversation. And we have the 5.x SDK which is the closed source one, and now our new 6.x SDK that is open source and built on OpenTelemetry. And the big difference there is we wanted to go all in to OpenTelemetry and so there was a lot of conversation of okay, we can add these objects and expose this interface and then shim it kind of back into the existing structures we had under the hood. But it was kind of just like, well, if we're not going all the way, why go at all? So, you know, it's like this. I, I don't want to do anything half assed. I, I want to go into this and really contribute. And it was, you know, that 5.x is built in Objective-C. Uh, and so open sourcing an Objective-C framework in 2024, I don't think was going to gather as much buzz and excitement. No offense to the people that love Objective-C. I, you know, it's, it's what created my career. I can't, I can't say anything bad about it, but, but Swift is, is my favorite language, we've established. And so it was, it was time to really remake the thing with all of our understanding and learnings of Observability and on these, working with these platforms and then build something on top of OpenTelemetry and really start participating in that working group and that community.

ADRIANA: Cool. So when you're using OpenTelemetry on your own product, is that mostly to benefit your developers, like developers within Embrace, or is this also benefiting consumers of your product as well?

AUSTIN: Hopefully everybody. So for me, the consumer is a developer working in their app and they want to observe something. And so we have some instrumentation that's automatic so that you can capture network requests just by installing the SDK. And the OpenTelemetry Swift project has very similar instrumentation as well. And so you can use that project there and get some instrumentation out of the box. And so I think the big benefit that we saw from it internally was now everybody can speak a common language and there's an established set of primitives like a span and a span event to log. These are, these are things that the terms often get overloaded and especially when you're in an organization and you have people of all levels that are, you know, marketing the product or selling the product. If you can have a very tiny set of primitives that we can agree on, then we can speak openly about what it is and what it does and, and use terms that hopefully are familiar to people outside of, of the company and then to hopefully benefit people outside of the company. They're coming in and, and hopefully the learning curve is as shallow as, as possible or as flat as possible. Because the primitives, if they're used to OpenTelemetry, the primitives are the same exact primitives. They're, they're working with spans to create a trace or they're creating logs. And there's no question of what is this, how is this modeled? What do I do to measure this as performance? It's just, oh, no, I need to wrap this with a span. So, yeah, hopefully that is beneficial to both sides and we'll see. Well, you know, it's always a feedback gathering opportunity when, when you put something out there and the fact that it's open source, I'm very, you know, hopeful that we get very good feedback because people can see under the covers and say yeah, you know, this, this doesn't line up how I would expect. Or I can see where this breakdown is occurring. Or this is great.

AUSTIN: I'll be an optimist and say, no, everything's fantastic. You did an awesome job.

ADRIANA: That's so cool. So, so, and then, then the Embrace product itself is, is basically it provides like a, like a UI so that like any, any mobile app can like that's, that's sending telemetry data to it. Can you. It's similar to like other Observability tools, but it's this one specifically tailored for, for mobile then.

AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah. And there are things that are mobile specific like a crash report or Android you have something called an ANR, an application not responding. It's a very common pop up that occurs or application exit info where it's just like the app just quits behind the scenes. The system killed the app. The next time the app launches, the system then provides, hey, we killed your app. Sorry, here's why. That's very mobile. Well, that one is especially Android specific data that we can then collect and save in our dashboard and hopefully explain to the users this is what happened, here's why. Or even just things where a user has quit the app and the user, apparently it seems the user got frustrated or stuck on this page. Go check out that page. Maybe there's a layout issue on the device that that user was using where the submit button was rendered off screen in whatever circumstance. You know, maybe their, their name had pushed it somewhere or their, whatever product they were purchasing had just pushed it off, off screen. It happens. But you know, hopefully they have the tools then to go fix that issue and, and you know, clip some of that text or you know, reflow their layout so that that button is now accessible.

ADRIANA: Cool. So then is it correct for me to assume that Embrace ingests like OTel data in like the native OTLP format or do you guys have like, like an exporter?

AUSTIN: So we're. Yeah, the state of it currently is we have a generic export, so we have instrumentation, we have interfaces to add a span that mimic the OpenTelemetry API. So you can add span, add logs, you can configure if you'd like a generic exporter. And so that's if you have a collector set up already, maybe you have a system somewhere in the cloud that is already ingesting telemetry. And you just want to add a new source to that? Yeah, you just pass us a generic exporter. A lot of those have already been implemented in the OpenTelemetry projects, or you can implement your own if you want to get it to your server in a custom shape and go from there. We by default will upload that data to our backend as well so that you can consume it in our dashboard. And so that's the current state of things. Where we want to go is actually provide the extensibility on the front end of that to ingest more of the data. To say here's the embrace tracer object, that is an OpenTelemetry object, conforms to the OpenTelemetry API. And you have your app that is already instrumented using OpenTelemetry. Just pass that tracer in and all of the instrumentation that you've provided throughout your app will just work. And it'll now flow through our SDK and into our system if you'd like it, or through our generic exporter if you'd like it. And that's kind of the free use. It's just, you don't have to touch our dashboard at all, but you're using our SDK and there's some benefit to the SDK to just maybe recover data if an app crash occurs. Or you just want to use our crash reporting tool and so you can just have that running and then have instrumentation flowing through. So yeah, that's, that's where we're work, what we're working on, you know, this sprint. And so you'll, you'll see that coming soon. If not, you know, already by the time this is out.

ADRIANA: So cool. So then does that mean, do you do, do consumers of Embrace need to use the SDKs then, your SDKs in order to emit telemetry? Or from the sounds of it, it look, they can use OTel then like can you bypass the, your, your own SDKs like the Embrace SDKs?

AUSTIN: We want people to be able to hot swap it of just saying, you know, and, and the way I look at that is, you know, there are three layers that, that we're playing with and it's the OpenTelemetry spec itself, the API that, that is, you know, very strict and very foundational. The semantic conventions that are provided by OpenTelemetry that the SIGs have come up with and agreed upon and promoted. And then the third layer is, I call them the embrace semantics. And it's the things that we've done. The instrumentation how we collect maybe device low power or a low memory warning and it's a custom shape to that telemetry that is still just a span maybe or it might be an event or a log, but we've, it's, it hasn't yet been baked into those OTel semantic conventions. And that's the goal is, is it's going to start, we're going to try to prove its value and its worth and the structure of that and the use case for that, that the shape of that telemetry and then once it's established, participate with the client side SIG, the Android SIG, the Swift SIG to say is this how you would, you know, model a low, low power mode?

ADRIANA: Right.

AUSTIN: And if that's the case, then let's propose it as a, an OTel semantic convention and then just have everybody understand, okay, if you have low power mode events, you know, it might be a span with the name of the span as this and the attributes are this and that and we measure the whole time. And so there's, you know, we, we, that top layer is really just for us to be able to move quickly and provide value to our customers. But as we're doing that, we're constantly talking with, with the SIGs every week to say, you know what, what's working for you? And the, it kind of goes both ways too. Any new semantic conventions that come out, we want to use and, and take on as soon as we can.

ADRIANA: Right.

AUSTIN: Right. But then our, our consumers, hopefully if you know, if they are using the OTel Swift SDK directly and they're happy with it, then great, that's fine. We might in the future put out a package that could sit next to the OTel Swift thing that is just like some Embrace conventions that are little helpers, you know, we extend the span to say, you know, just to make little, make it quicker and easier for developer to measure something like low power mode or disk IO for connecting to an SQLite database locally on the client. That would be just useful and we want to hopefully drive that and be helpful. That's those tools I was talking about of just being helpful that somebody finds inspiring and useful.

ADRIANA: That's awesome. Then what it sounds like to me and correct me if I'm wrong, is trying to make sure that you're as much up to date with the OTel semantic conventions and APIs as much as possible. It sounds like then the Embrace SDK is almost like an implementation, your own implementation of the API, which is by design like an OTel thing that anyone can really implement the, the API with their own SDKs. But also as, but also making sure that you contribute back to the community and hopefully making some upstream contributions to the OTel project that can then be part of that. Reintegrated.

AUSTIN: Yeah. Into the foundation.

ADRIANA: So that, yeah.

AUSTIN: So it's not, you know, then, then you know, our name gets out there and people maybe not just the patterns that we've hopefully established to get out there and people start using them. And that, that would just put a smile on my face like, oh, you found that useful. Great. And, and it's just, yeah, it's all about that learning curve. Mobile developers especially we found aren't used to OpenTelemetry, haven't. It's just not talked about as much or it's not as standardized and so so hopefully by making it easier, it's, it's more accessible and people jump in. So yeah, that's the, the manifesto, I guess.

ADRIANA: Yeah, that's great. It's so interesting because there's so much focus on kind of your common languages for instrumenting in OTel and yet mobile apps are all around us. They're such a ubiquitous part of our lives that when you think about it, it's like, oh, of course there should be instrumentation on our mobile apps, but it's easy to forget about that. So it's cool that that's being tackled and that area is getting some TLC now.

AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah. It's not a new frontier. There have been players in the space for a little bit, but definitely TLC is always appreciated if nothing else.

ADRIANA: Yeah, definitely. And one thing I want to ask you about as well was in, in terms of like implementing OpenTelemetry in your own application internally, how was that for, for, you know, like the, the teams that Embrace. Like, was it how, how would you say the experience was? Like what, what were some of the challenges that you encountered? What are some of the things where you're like, oh my God, this is amazing.

AUSTIN: None of it was too OpenTelemetry specific. Most of it was just now we have a third party dependency that, that we depend on and in a really big way. And OpenTelemetry isn't our only dependency and but it just comes down to the minutia. So we have this generic export where we can, especially for tracing, we export this object called span data. When a span finishes, it gets frozen for a lack of a better term as a span data object and then exported. Right now, at least in the Swift side of things, that was private and we couldn't Access that and create our own and send them off. It caused some development time I guess to, because we had, we had written out and basically re implemented a lot of the SDK to do what we wanted to do. And then we realized oh this, this export won't work.

We can't, we don't have access that final piece. So we actually just, let's scrap it and just use it directly. And now we'll, we had to kind of change our thinking to just use the, the OTel SDK as a third party dependency a little more directly than we initially expected. We just wanted to stay at the API layer and that was a challenge just because it was an assumption that was made that was broken probably two or three months into the project and then had to slow down to make sure that we could do what we needed to do. But now we're past that and you know, works great and it was, you know, better, you know, we, we, we got to a better state and what was great about that is you know, I, I attend the Swift SIG. I went to the Swift SIG and Nacho is, is one of the like lead guys there and he was very helpful, explained what, what his expectation would be and why that is private, why that span data object is private and, and why we shouldn't just open it up. You know, and so that is exactly how the process should go. There was a question, I raised the question.

They you know, came together, discussed and said no, where there, there's a workaround for you and so go, go use the workaround. So, so it was you know, helpful to do that and, but it just, it just, I think that software, general, software development in general is you know, the assumption was broken. Yeah halfway, you know, a time, after some time occurred and now there's you know, not a sunk cost fallacy but just like we're going to have to change the assumption, that original assumption. So let's, let's walk back a bit. But other than that the team understood like the, the, the benefits of OpenTelemetry are so apparent. Like we need a common envelope so that all of our telemetry can, can flow through this same channel. And if we want to start instrumenting a new thing, we shouldn't have to change anything along that channel. It should just be a new span and we've done, done some things to kind of type hint what that span is.

So if we have a network request, our backend can pick it up and see, oh, this is a network request and we're going to treat it as such. And that's been very useful. But that's all within the constraints of OpenTelemetry, which is great because it, it makes, it takes a lot of the decisions away, which means we can focus on the things that we really care about or we really want to try to do.

ADRIANA: Yes, then you don't even have to reinvent the wheel because it's there.

AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

ADRIANA: Nice. Yeah. And do you use, do you use OpenTelemetry then to debug your own product, like your own code?

AUSTIN: We do actually. And this, there's a feature that we just implemented. Feature? Is it a feature if it's not external? I think so, but we implemented, we call it internal logs and it's how the SDK itself works. And so we have errors that occur. We store data into an SQLite database ourselves for local storage and it's a file operation that can fail for, especially on mobile devices for many different reasons. The device can just stop or the device can be out of disk space. And so when that happens we have to do something about it. And we, you know, the disk space one's a little odd because you're trying to save data that you can't, but we send off these internal logs that are just OpenTelemetry logs.

ADRIANA: That's so cool.

AUSTIN: Yeah. And it's the best type of dog food, I guess.

ADRIANA: You know, it's totally, I love, I love hearing these end user stories because, you know, I'm one of the maintainers of the End User SIG and so I think being able to share stories of folks not just in the companies who are like, you know, your typical consumers of OTel, which is like whatever, whatever large enterprise, but also like the, the Observability vendors themselves. Using OpenTelemetry on their own product, I think makes for a very compelling story because especially like, if we want folks to use OpenTelemetry, then it stands to reason that Observability vendors would, it would be very wise to use OpenTelemetry on themselves and to use that to help them troubleshoot their own product.

AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And even just the performance of like another is the, the startup time of our SDK. It's if, if we're slowing down, you know, we ask that our SDK is, is created and started at the app launch time. Well, that's a critical point in time for an app and you want to show that user the initial content as soon as possible. And if our startup time is blocking and slowing down the app startup time, that's going to cause problems for us and that user. And so we don't want that. So we can trace that. We can just break it down by each operation that we want to show exactly how long it takes. And there's some interesting things that the platforms do that we can hook into. Like how is the process kind of warms up and the. The system actually kind of warms things up after it guesses if the user is going to interact with an app or not. So if a push notification comes in, it's likely that the user is going to tap that push notification and come into the app. And so in certain circumstances, the system will warm that process up. And if we know that launch time of the process, we can actually see how long it took or how long that warming process, how long that process was kept warm, I guess, is what I'm trying to say, before that user has entered the app. And so it's just very interesting things. It's almost not even the performance of our SDK, but just like interesting behavior that the system is doing that I'm curious about. Maybe no one else is interested in this, but I'm just like, okay, this is how Apple is doing stuff under the hood. Let me. Let me take a peek.

ADRIANA: That's very cool. Well, we are coming up on time, but before we wrap up, I wanted to ask if you have any words of wisdom or hot takes to share with our audience.

AUSTIN: If you're working on a project and it's closed source and you're curious about going open source, I would say just do it. It's very useful to get feedback. I have a couple of side projects that I am toiling with. I just need to spend the time to actually finalize them and push out, you know, the little blurb of a readme that they need, but I just need to do it. And so that would be the words of wisdom. Put it out there, get feedback. It's cool. I will use it. It's. And you know, it'll be more fun. I'm sure it will.

ADRIANA: That's awesome. Well, thank you so much, Austin, for geeking out with me today. Y'all don't forget to subscribe and be sure to check the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media. Until next time...

AUSTIN: Peace out and geek out.

ADRIANA: Geeking Out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Villela. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking Out is also produced by my daughter, Hannah Maxwell, who incidentally designed all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the socials by going to bento.me/geekingout.

A Quick Program Announcement

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Dzero Labs) — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 05:00:00 +0000

Hey fellow geeks! A quick programming note. Starting in january 2025, we'll be dropping new episodes of Geeking Out every two weeks instead of once a week. Our next episode will be out on January 28th. peace out and geek out!

The One Where We Geek Out on Sustainable Applications with Aicha Laafia

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Adriana Villela, Hannah Maxwell, Aicha Laafia) — Tue, 14 Jan 2025 05:00:00 +0000

About our guest:

Aicha Laafia Java Software Engineer with a love for coding, a taste for delicious food, and a heart for volunteering. Aicha is also a member of the Moroccan Association of Computing Science, a Women Techmakers and Girls Code ambassador, and an IAmRemarkable facilitator.

Find our guest on:

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show notes:

Transcript:
ADRIANA: Hey, fellow geeks, welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada and geeking out with me today, I have Aisha Laafia. Welcome, Aisha.

AICHA: Welcome, Adriana. And welcome everyone.

ADRIANA: So nice to have you on here and for a little bit of background. Oh, so first of all, actually, where are you calling from today?

AICHA: Well, right now I'm from Lyon in France.

ADRIANA: That's awesome. And you know, given that it's afternoon here in, in Canada when we're recording in Toronto, Canada, um, it's evening for you, so I appreciate you taking the time out of your evening, especially because you, you had an event that you were at earlier today that you ducked out of for this recording, so definitely appreciate that. And you know, I wanted to mention to our viewers slash listeners that the way that you and I met was really cool. We met at KCD Porto in Portugal in September of 2024. And yeah, I, I was keynoting there and then you came up to me after my keynote and we started chatting, and it was just so great chatting with you. I had like such an amazing time and, you were telling me your story, so I can't wait to get into that. But first, I have some lightning round slash icebreaker questions for you. Okay, you ready?

AICHA: I'm ready.

ADRIANA: Okay. I swear they're not terrible, they're not painful. Okay, first question. Are you a lefty or a righty?

AICHA: Well, I am a righty.

ADRIANA: Okay. Do you prefer iPhone or Android?

AICHA: I'm always Android girl.

ADRIANA: All right. Do you prefer Mac, Linux, or Windows?

AICHA: Well, I preferred Linux, but I'm forced to use Windows.

ADRIANA: Oh, that makes me cry. That makes me cry. Do you use Windows subsystem for Linux?

AICHA: That's my hero, literally.

ADRIANA: Yeah, that's what saved me too. The last time I had a Windows machine, I'm like, please let them have enabled it. Because that's the other thing. You get a Windows machine and like some companies disable it or don't allow you to like download the VMs, like the whatever Linux VM to run WSL.

AICHA: Well, for me...that's the first thing I ask about is that give me the administration role in my. I have to take control.

ADRIANA: Yes, yes, yes. Good call, good call. And I mean, you do dev work, you should have, you know, some, some sort of administrative access over your, your machine, right?

AICHA: Indeed. And as I am you can say old school. I'm all more like comand type of people. Developers who use command more than like platforms or desktop applications. For me. I like to write things to see logs more than just to click on buttons.

ADRIANA: For sure, for sure. I feel you. Okay, next question. Do you have a favorite programming language?

AICHA: It's obviously Java. I don't know like hesitate this question. Of course it's Java.

ADRIANA: Of course. I love it.

AICHA: I love it.

ADRIANA: I think I told you Java was like I spent many years in, in Java, so Java and I were very good friends for a long time. I couldn't tell you what's new in Java anymore though. I'm so out of touch.

AICHA: Well, there's a lot of things indeed. Like Java has been accelerating very, very fast and that's a very good news for us.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, I can imagine. Like what? Okay, so my. I'm of the days of like EJBs and J2EE which I don't even know if that's like a thing anymore. What's, what's something cool in Java like that you're excited about.

AICHA: Like right now it's still a thing, but they're working more like beans or Spring doing its work with more advanced features that's handling the beans. But for Java native, like we have the system that. For example, what I really loved is the ZCG like the garbage collection. Right now it's really advanced. Like for there is ?Shenandoah, for example that it doesn't care about what memory size you have. It's always accelerating, always taking care of your memory handling mechanism. Also like right now we don't have to type a lot of things. That's something that many people complain about Java. There are that there are a lot of new features. You get anonymous classes you can create. You don't have like really to do that big lines. You have like Lombok project that you. We cannot like really right now write all those getters and setters for our instance. You can just enable annotation. Getter. Setter.

ADRIANA: Oh my God, yes. This would have saved me so much time. I remember like painstakingly writing all the getters and setters back in the day and you know like your IDE can like auto generate that stuff and all that if you, if you're nice to it. But yeah, that's, that's nice that annotations can help with that. Yay. Yeah, annotations. I think we're just getting started when I was getting out of Java. So yeah, it's been a while.

AICHA: You missed the fun.

ADRIANA: I know, I know I missed the fun. I missed the fun. I, I gotta ask because, because you're, you're into the Java world. How do you, have you ever played with Kotlin or Groovy?

AICHA: Groovy? Yes. Because I didn't. Well, Groovy. Not that much because most of the projects I worked on they were mainly based on Maven, so but a lot of part we tried to migrate some Groovy there and see to replace it but it didn't work. Yeah. So I'm mainly like Maven. For Kotlin, I didn't have the chance to do it, but it's really my to learn list because I've heard a lot of people saying it's really advanced. Like it takes the basic of Java, it's based on Java, but a lot of you can use it on the mobile, you can use it on desktop, even programs in like it's more light, small. Like in terms of performance. I've heard a lot of good things.

ADRIANA: About Kotlin, so yeah, I, I have as well. So yeah, yeah I, I, that's one I wouldn't mind trying out if, if I had time. I gotta, gotta find that time though to learn. There's like so many cool things to learn, I don't know where to start.

AICHA: Indeed this is, and this is why like Kotlin and Python is on my 2025 like to learn lists.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

AICHA: With the machine in AI right now, every like service we try to integrate AI a lot to automate the things especially that communicate with people and a lot of handling processes we try. So I have to learn Python because even using Java in the machine learning there are some script or some integrated libraries that use Python. So we have to understand. Oh in that the new things about Java, we can handle machine learning with Java too.

ADRIANA: That's cool. That's very cool. It's funny you mentioned Python because Python was like the language I learned after Java and I mean Python's been around for so long. Right. And I have to say like, I hope when you get around to Python I would love to know what your thoughts are. I always, I like Python. I think it's a very pleasant, pleasant language to, to develop in. So yeah. Yeah and yeah it's like so big in, in the machine learning space. It's wild. I love it. I love that it's like it's still alive and kicking.

AICHA: Indeed. Like for me before I started with actually the first time I tried something like coding. It was a Linux script that was like in the middle school. My sister, she was studying a little bit of like tech. It was the tech. So and she was trying some scripting Linux. She was like try this. I. I still remember my first command. It was "ls".

ADRIANA: That was my first Linux command too.

AICHA: I didn't know what does do what does how it works but I tried. But like yeah, that's interesting. And then when I tried to look for like what I want to do. For backup story, I used to dream to be a psychologist.

ADRIANA: Oh cool.

AICHA: I could not find like a really good school there that have the like the domain that I want to study there in Morocco. So it was like I need to something that you can analyze a lot of things that have a lot of logics there. And I found the tech industry especially when I got to know that that's something that we will do it in the future. It's really developing. It's. It will become part of our life. I start to be more passionate, more curious about this and this is where I try. Yeah I will do. I will go to the tech industry but what I will do. I try to look for something. Tried front end, back end when I was a student. B ut I found myself more into backend especially Java. Like I start with the C language at first. I, I create some really interesting like I even built a mini game for 3D using C. Language C. Yeah, I even like in. Then I switch a little bit doing something that like creating the systems more and with Linux like kernel that's. That was my geek in phase there in school.

ADRIANA: That's great.

AICHA: Yeah. And then I was like I, I was introduced to Java and I can call it like falling in love first line of code because I love really the sense of being organized. There is a pattern, it's organized. If you miss something, you know what's going on, what you missed. And it's really mature, it's really robust. Like it's always about mechanism that handling a lot from errors to security and all that. And even like back there there was a lot of code. I was like okay, that's a price I will take. I will code a lot. But it's good for me.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

AICHA: And this is why like I start to fall in love with Java. But what really make me adore it, it's always the community.

ADRIANA: Oh yeah, yeah. I hear lovely things about the Java community. I actually had someone on the podcast earlier, Ix-chel Ruiz, she's based out of, I want to say Basel. Have you met Ix-chel?

AICHA: Actually, thanks to Ix-chel that I did my first technical talk. And thank you a lot because we met back there in the Devoxx Morocco, like in 2022, I think, or 23. And I did the, like, my first real talk. It was on how to organize. I did it tech events, like IT events one to one. And I met her during her talk. By the end of talk, I went to talk to her and I said that I do this talk. Here's what I'm talking about. And she was like, you do Java, Why not do a technical talk? I said, I don't have experience, like no shared experience that you have. We need more women in tech. I even like did a little bit of a little interview, like open mic. That's something I used to do for community there in Morocco. And I met her and a lot of women in tech and it was like, go do it. And the amazing part is that my first, like, on site technical talk on the Barcelona, she was there. I met her.

ADRIANA: Oh, my God.

AICHA: Yeah.

ADRIANA: Oh, my God. I'm getting like all emotional hearing this.

AICHA: You know, for the fact that I told the community that this is my first real technical, like talk. They all went to to see my talk all in the front. I was like, oh, really? Like the Java champion that were my role model are now attending my talk. That's my.

ADRIANA: Wow, that is such a great and inspiring story. And you know, like the fact that we have a connection back to a previous guest. And I remember actually when Ix-chel was. Was on the podcast, she mentioned that one of the reasons why she got into public speaking is that she wanted to empower other women. And I love hearing the story. Like I, you know, a story where another guest was empowered by her. This is so lovely.

AICHA: Like, I really have to thank her because she did. She said, why not if you're already doing a talk, do the technical one.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah. And. And you know, what you said is so important. A lot of people are like, well, but I'm not, you know, I haven't gotten too deep into this. I'm not enough of an expert. And people want to hear that stuff because there's still beginners out there. There. Like, it's very relatable. So relatable. And. And I think it's more relatable coming from a beginner talking from a beginner's point of view than someone being more experienced talking from a beginner's point of view. I think it's a very powerful story that way. I Love, honestly, I love the story. I love that you, you felt empowered by Ix-chel and, and you were lifted up by the rest of the Java community through their support just by being there for your talk. And, and you know, like I, I can. I saw you speak at KCD Porto. You were a great speaker. You gave, was it a lightning talk? I'm trying to remember. It was on sustainability. It was, it was a really great talk on sustainability. I'm so glad that I attended because it was, it was like really informative, you know, to the point, fun. Everything that a talk needs to be.

AICHA: Yeah, for me, as I said, sustainability was, was and is a really topic that I'm interested of and I try to really let people know that we need to consider an impact that we forgot a lot or not being attention to it. We're always talking about protecting the environment, sorting our like our things, making, using like more renewable energy resources. But we never check what our codes do to the environment. And as I said before, our tech industry like contribute to 3% of the global greenhouse gas emissions, and by 2030 it will be more than 13%. And that's a really huge number that we contribute to it as developers. And for us, if you want to really like make impact you need big steps that we go to the data centers, to the other like companies that create the machines that use energy to let them reduce the energy or go for more, we can sell real like energy, renewable energy that's more greener energy resources. But for us that's something that's, for us as a developer, it's really big step that's so hard for. So why not start with baby steps by at least making our application optimized, making our code clean and then going step by step to be a green code.

So first step is that for me you need to. The least thing you can do is that go with the more algorithms that use less time, the less time the less resources to consume. And then the second step is to monitor your application, whatever it's talking about, the energy or the carbon emissions. There are some SDKs that we can use, some tools we can use for monitoring and there's a lot of like big movements and efforts by developers to developers to seek this like this purpose. So please guys, don't just check the financial impact but also the environmental one.

ADRIANA: I totally agree with you on that and I think that's so important because you know, we, we talk, I, I think there's a lot of talk on the impact that our data centers have on the environment. Which is a huge impact, like really making sure that our infrastructure is greener. But then there's also the software that we're running, making sure that that is greener as well. And I think you brought focus on a really important point. It's gotta come from both sides, both the operational standpoint and the development standpoint. The application standpoint. Those, those two things combined can help us make greener software. And it's, it's kind of ironic that like we're in an industry that you know like the, the mere fact that we're, we're working in this industry is contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. Which personally makes me feel a little bit guilty as I go along because you see all this horrible stuff like all these extreme climate events going on.

AICHA: Indeed. And many when you're discussing about how to really help the environment, you're like oh, we will use like common transportation, we will do this, we will take care of our plants. And I was like, show me your code. Show me your code. Show me your logs. Show me the energy usage that you use. They were like no, the thing is they thought that it will not impact. Then I said check the statistics because our codes use machines and machines needs energy and that energy it's due to some the we can call it like the complexity of our algorithms that's something we write were directly impacted. So as always. And also up, like, besides the code, there is the energy in the resource management and this is why like there in Porto I mentioned like, for Kubernetes, there is horizontal like HPA and VPA. Like you need to check your pods. Don't just overcharge your pod or create more pods that you will not need that consumes more energy.

And also like during your pod, check your nodes too. So it's more like you need to seed balance. Don't create too many pods that will consume more and don't create then few pods that will be overcharged. So it will impact the performance. It's always about balancing the performance with. You can call it like the optimization.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, that's a really good point too and. Oh, sorry, go ahead.

AICHA: No, it's okay. It's okay like for the fun fact is that I don't do DevOps but like it's only on casual things. I do it from time to time with our DevOps like team or engineer doesn't have the time to do it. But when I see a like real impact of our Java native codes I have to say that we need like to containerizations of our application. We need to more focus on the clouds because this is, you can call it temporary solution to like to avoid the machines that the traditional one because it's consume more energy than containers. Than using containers in virtual machines. So you can continue.

ADRIANA: Damn. So it's basically a point for containers.

AICHA: Indeed. CNCF is really working on some amazing projects for sustainability. I just discovered there in KCD Porto and I really loved what they do. They say we working on open source projects where everyone can contribute and right now we are seeing the impact of this we try to do too. So good job, guys.

ADRIANA: Yay. And you're referring to the TAG Sustainability group in CNCF. That's awesome. And speaking of that, what. Is there any specific project in CNCF that that group is working on that like really, really interests you where you're like oh, they're really doing some cool work on sustainability?

AICHA: Well right now I don't remember because I saw a lot of projects but there is one about Kubernetes that handle like really the pods that you are using, if it's not been used, it turned off automatically, something like that. So it's managed like the usage. If there are some heavy usage, it turn on some other pods inactivated and if, if a pod is not activated, is not used, it will be deactivated automatically. That's something about managing. Yeah, I just don't. I forgot the name. I'm having this issue of forgetting names of projects in libraries a lot.

ADRIANA: That's all good.

AICHA: It's Kube-Green. Kube-Green.

ADRIANA: Oh yeah. Kube-Green. Sleep your Pods, reduce your CO2 emissions. Hey, I learned something new today. That's awesome. So Kube-Green is the, is the name of the project. That's, that's super awesome that there's something out there that, that you know is, is monitoring your, your pods. Um, yeah, it, it's funny. And, and you know like this is one of those things where you can tie it back to finance where you're like, well you know, if you're using, if, if you got a bunch of idle pods like it's going to cost you money because not the cloud, the cloud's not free. So I feel like it's a compelling argument to like you know, tie greenhouse gas emissions to financial repercussions as well. Because as we know executives speak in dollars and not CO2 emissions. So it helps to make for a more compelling argument.

AICHA: Yeah, actually this is what I, I'm always saying at the end of my talk. If the stakeholders are not convinced, talk about finance, tell them that you will use less energy, less money.

ADRIANA: Exactly. Perfect. Perfect. That's awesome. I got to ask you like what interested you in this aspect of like sustainability and tech in the first place?

AICHA: Actually I just discovered it out of curiosity. I saw a tweet about something like sustainability. I look for it like sustainability in tech industry. The first thing that comes in the search is was statistics. That's how, how scary it is how big those numbers are. I was like damn, we need to take action and why not start it by myself. What I am doing, what I like to do is to share information. Especially like I start to submit talks. And this is why the first talk I did it was in the Barcelona to talk about the green programming in Java.

ADRIANA: And what you know, I want to. I want to take a. A little step back in. In your. Just rewind on your career stuff. Because when. When you and I met, one of the things that most impressed me about you is you know, just like you had this curiosity to like hey, I just wanted to like learn. Learn about this. You know, the. The environmental impact of tech. I. I was so impressed. I think you told me a story about how like you were thrown into a very unknown situation at one of your previous companies where you basically had to learn DevOps kind of on the fly. If I recall correctly. and correct me if I'm wrong. I was wondering if you could talk about that.

AICHA: I start first as intern there I was in the team with like lots of backend developer and there was a system engineer that handled this. After that it was a decision by the client do not like have any system engineering and we will have to do this. Then when I. When I then like after one year I've been transferred to another team. We were just only two backends and it was a lot of challenging tasks to do. So I started with little things. Thankfully I already have some background. Like I already know Linux. I already know Docker. How to use, how to run containers. It was the basics, but I have to handle a lot of things from Kibana from Logs. Grafana. How to check this. Jenkins. How to handle CI/CD Circle. If there is issue especially like you are talking about Ansible, how to use. Or versioning with Nexus. If some issue with logins or some issue with connection between them how to handle it. It was like a very new world for me. And I was like. The senior that that I have on my second team, it was a really good senior. He was a really good mentor because I said to him listen, you don't have to do all the work just because you are a senior. I'll try to help. Just give me the index what I can learn to do this. And he just gave me we can see the alphabets. Go learn Docker. I said I already have the background. And he was like, if you know Linux, Docker, and keep a little bit of Kubernetes, just take care of the system issues in the server and I will handle the rest. So by second, like on the second team, I only handled system issues. But then after a while I've been transferred to the other team and I was the only backend dev. This is where I have to do all the work. So yes, I start to learn about Ansible, Jenkins, Nexus, Grafana, Kibana, and all geeky stuff. Well, the thing is, first it was a little bit challenging, but I found myself really loving it like to discover. Especially because I start to understand DevOps. It's not only about tools, it's about how to communicate with the team, it's how to operate. Yeah, operate is only about machines about to operate between the teams. What the team needs, you need to talk to them to understand what version they need, what, like which time they will need it so we can schedule it to have the environment ready for them to test or to develop something there. So for me it was a good start. And this is where I become more interested in the cloud too, and DevOps.

ADRIANA: Yeah, that's so cool.

AICHA: So it was like a best decision from the big head that lead to some really good results for us too.

ADRIANA: That's such an amazing story. And you know, you've touched upon so many things that I think are so important for anyone getting into software, which is like, you know, you were. I think a lot of us who get into software, like the jobs that we start off with when we graduate are not the jobs we end up with years down the line. I mean, technology evolves so much and you have to evolve your learning along the way. You have to evolve your point of view and you have to be willing to take on new stuff. And I love that you have this very positive attitude towards learning because I think if you're not willing to learn new stuff, you're in technology. I don't know, like, I think you're gonna have a very short career. And you took it, you took it in stride and, and correct me if I'm wrong, but you're pretty, like. You're, you're pretty young in your career, right? If, if I recall from our conversations earlier.

AICHA: Actually, yeah. I almost have like with interns all that, three years of experience. Like with the same job I start as intern, like handling small tasks small, fixing bugs. And then I went to my manager and I said, listen, I don't feel like this is the real tech, this is the real development. It's about fixing solutions, fixing problems, finding solutions. I need to understand like the business to fix the issues. It was like, okay, you can start doing some like analyze solution designs. You can start with small ones. This is where I went to the second team and they were, they know this fact. The first ticket that I worked on it, it was like a function ticket they gave me. This is what the like the client needs. I created solution design for it. The architect for it, I discussed with my senior, he validated. Then I start to develop it to implement what I write. And this is like for me my beginning to technical, like writing. So in by that when I start really to do technical talking, I start to write documentation too. Because I found something, some information were missing and was like, I need to write this myself. If it's not for me, it's for like the next generation, the one that will come after me.

ADRIANA: Exactly. And that's, that's such a great attitude because I, you know, it's so easy to sit there and like complain about oh these docs are crappy and then but you can do something about it. You can go and fix it and make it better for everyone.

AICHA: Indeed. Especially because the team that I was working on, it was a big one, but it was like if there is something to upgrade, something to handle, go for it. Because it's really old projects, they try always to make migration to upgrade new services, but for all documentation it was been untouched. So do you say you're welcome, just leave a note why you did this and everything's good.

ADRIANA: That's great, that's great. And I think, you know, I do find like documenting things makes you a better speaker because I think it forces you to like really sit back and like choose your words carefully to be able to explain stuff. And especially for a technical talk, technical documentation, you really have to be able to explain it, explain things clearly in order to be effective at it. Which is I think a very, it's a very hard skill to hone. And you know, considering that like you're so young in your career and you've done all of this amazing stuff, it just blows my mind. Like you, you've got to be like, if I were your manager, I'd be like, can we just clone her a bunch?

AICHA: Actually like the last team there, I was work in SQLI in Morocco. I had manager. He was like, listen, I'm already consider you a senior. You can do it. He never ever like questions my decisions.

ADRIANA: Well, I think you bring in the right attitude too, because so many people like I've worked with, I've managed my fair share of people. And I've, I've, I had, I've had superstars like you. And then I've had the people who are like, tell me what I need to do. And it's like, dude. Just like, show, a little bit of initiative, please.

AICHA: We can do it. Well, yeah, indeed, because I really had a good start. That's, I had a good start. You were like, listen, here we don't make difference between senior or junior. If there is a ticket and you are free, you can do it. You want help, ask for it. We will give you mentoring. And this is why they really spent two years and a half there. It was a really boosting career for me.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

AICHA: So. And then even like I had to make the hard decision to quit that company because I got opportunity to go to live here in France. And for me, because I really like, I want to try new adventure, especially to come to Europe. But we can say mainly because of events, because of community, because here it's more accessible right now. I can travel to events without like checking for visas or other traveling requirements. So I said, why not? I'm still young, I'll try it. And I come here in France with this company. They hire me as like backend software consultants and then they do conferences too. This is where I got opportunity to do talks from in Barcelona, in, in Spain, Barcelona and in Luxembourg too. But as there is a crisis here in like the tech industry, I've been fired, laid off. Yeah. And this is the like a message to everyone who's saying it will not impact you. You never know because. And it's not your fault.

ADRIANA: That's so true. That's so true.

AICHA: Yeah. Because thankful I'm already having like this cheerful mindset. When I, when I got the news, I was like, okay, that's happened. And what's really helped me, to be honest, is that on that period of time there was Paris Olympics, so I had the time, the full time to enjoy it.

ADRIANA: That's true. That's true.

AICHA: Good.

ADRIANA: It's something to distract you while, you know, like from, from a, a very crappy situation. But you know, like, I, I think you, you made a really excellent point, which is like, you know, when, when you're laid off because a company's making cutbacks or whatever, it's. You can't help but take it personally. It's devastating news. It cuts you. It, it really does. And I mean and, and I think it's a perfectly normal reaction to have. I think you have to, you need that time to mourn it. Right?

AICHA: Indeed. Because you start to question yourself, your like competence, your abilities. You keep telling, oh, because I don't have, like, I don't have experience enough that this is why it's happened to me in all that. And then I was like, well, I got. The thing is for me. Or I can give this advice to everyone. If you are facing any difficulty situation, give yourself the time to process it. Accept the fact it's happen. If you want to cry, cry. If you want to scream, scream. Just don't let it inside you. That's really. It will impact more your mental health. Express yourself. Let it go. Let it out of you. It's either if you are more like talking person, talk to someone. If you are doing physical, good. Go for a run or go for a dance. If you are more like party person, just don't, don't just stay like on your house alone thinking or thinking about it. Because the good is that. I already took this lesson from a book that I read. It's about when you start to understand what you can change and what you cannot change and not waste energy on what you cannot change. More on focus on solutions than the problem. You will like optimize, you can say your resources and you will help yourself, your mental self. So please difference between what you can change, what you cannot change.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I, I think that's such an important thing. Such an important point to make is, is, you know, be aware of what you can change. Be aware of you can't, what you can't change because it's very easy to get sucked into that and, and you know, like one negative thought feeds another and, and it can, it can spiral and you know, we've talked about mental health a number of times on, on this podcast and, and getting laid off takes a toll on your mental health. You know, it, I, I'd be surprised if you said it didn't, you know, like, because it is like, it's tough.

AICHA: Yeah, it did. Especially like for me because I never ever had this situation. I was studying and I had like there in Morocco, we have the last six months of ours, like studying in engineering school. We do an internship. And I was recruited during the internship, so directly. I didn't have any process and it was like kind of first time I'm jobless. I have a lot of like especially I have rents to pay. I'll have lots of charge. I need to look for a job ASAP. And it was like during the Olympics. So this stopped the recruitment. They were more focusing on the vacation, Olympics, and all that. So and the fact that by time I didn't find a job, I was like, why this is happen to me and that. I try hard. And then I was like, why? Just looking there in like the Paris region, why not look in France? And this is where I got this job here in Lyon. And the funny fact I really like here, I, I start to see like the impact of me getting laid off. It was a good thing.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

AICHA: Because right now here I'm really with, with the, with the team. That's really encouraging. Giving me all like give your potential. If you want to do something, if you want to suggest something, do it. And like really very, they are very like lovely persons. Like today we have the Christmas party. It was so fun. And for the fact that I don't drink, I was the only one that doesn't drink there. The only one that's eating like halal food.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

AICHA: Like the menu for today it was mainly fish and veggie meals because I cannot eat meat.

ADRIANA: Right, right.

AICHA: Yeah. This is how considerate they are. So for me it's

ADRIANA: Nice that they were so accommodating.

AICHA: Indeed.

ADRIANA: And I was gonna say, you know, there's something to be said when you said you're the only one who, who wasn't drinking there. I was, I was laughing because I was thinking like there's something to be said for being the only sober person in a party full of like tipsy people. And it is really, I, I, I've been that person and it is funny.

AICHA: You know, for the fact they say that even if I don't drink, I don't need to.

ADRIANA: You've got the energy, you don't need alcohol to give you, to give you party energy. Right?

AICHA: Yeah, that's the spirit. And as they said he, right now we are having a party. We forgot about the work. We enjoy yourself. There is a music, there is companies like chatting casually so no need for drinks.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, I, I feel you, I feel you. I, I, I will choose bubble tea over alcohol any day. So that's great. Well, we're coming up on time. But this has been such a lovely conversation. Every time I talk to you, I'm more and more inspired by you. I. I see you doing some wonderful, wonderful things in your career. You're just getting started. Now, before we part ways, I was wondering if you could give some parting words of wisdom to our viewers and listeners.

AICHA: There's always a lesson to learn. It's either we win or we learn from our experience. So whatever you have situation, if it was bad, just endure it, accept it and start to look for solutions. And this is for especially for you, the women in tech. Please, please, please start to shine out, start to be presented in communities and events. We need you. We need you a lot because as we are kind of minority, people start to think that there is few women that work intech when you are really having huge impact. So please, this is we can say for women and men, if you have experience, share it. The small details, share it. If you don't like to show off the camera, you can write articles, you can post like on LinkedIn. We are right now talking about Bluesky, our new platforms. Yeah. So choose the platform that you're feeling comfortable with. Start to share your the information that you have because even if you find it like something really simple, but it could help another developer. So please build the community to be like from developers to developers and don't be shy to seek help because we're not only giving information, but we need information too. So all I can say is that pay attention to your mental health, look for more communities in your domain and enjoy your life. That's it.

ADRIANA: I love it. Oh, what a perfect way to end this podcast. Thank you so much, Aisha, for geeking out with me today. Y'all, don't forget to subscribe and be sure to check the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media. Until next time...

AICHA: Peace out and geek out.

ADRIANA: Geeking Out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Villela. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking Out is also produced by my daughter, Hannah Maxwell, who incidentally designed all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all. The socials by going to bento.me/geekingout.

The One Where We Geek Out on Security with Michael Levan

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Adriana Villela, Hannah Maxwell, Kayla Reopelle) — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 05:00:00 +0000

About our guest:

Michael Levan is a seasoned engineer and consultant in the Kubernetes and Platform Engineering space who spends his time working with startups and enterprises around the globe on Kubernetes consulting, training, and content creation. He is a trainer, 4x published author, podcast host, international public speaker, CNCF Ambassador, and was part of the Kubernetes v1.28 and v1.31 Release Team.

Find our guest on:

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show notes:

Transcript:
ADRIANA: Hey, fellow geeks. Welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And geeking out with me today, I have Michael Levine. Welcome, Michael.

MICHAEL: Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it.

ADRIANA: Yeah, really excited to have you on. Where are you calling from today?

MICHAEL: I am in New Jersey.

ADRIANA: Ooh, fellow east coaster. Yay.

MICHAEL: I know. Yeah, I'm. I'm actually. I'm in the process of thinking about getting out of here.

ADRIANA: Oh. Yeah.

MICHAEL: So, yeah, maybe Tampa or Austin. Those have been.

ADRIANA: Oh, so somewhere warm.

MICHAEL: Yeah, yeah, those have been the two spots that I've been really thinking about lately.

ADRIANA: Cool. I've never been to Austin, but I always hear good things about Austin, especially the food scene.

MICHAEL: Yes. Yeah, I feel like I hear that a lot, especially like podcasts and stuff. Like, I'll be listening to just random podcasts. People will talk. Be talking about how great the food is out there. A lot of barbecue, obviously. 'Murca, and. And all that good stuff. So there's. There's a lot of barbecue and that type of food.

ADRIANA: I am down for the barbecue.

MICHAEL: Exactly.

ADRIANA: Cool. Well, we will be starting off with our lightning round questions. Are you ready?

MICHAEL: I'm ready.

ADRIANA: Hey, first question. Are you a lefty or a righty?

MICHAEL: Righty.

ADRIANA: Okay. Do you prefer iPhone or Android?

MICHAEL: I think iPhone, because I've just been using it for so long. But I would argue, though, that will argue with myself that about twice a year I think about switching to Android.

ADRIANA: Oh, yeah.

MICHAEL: But it's just. I feel like I'm just so used to the ecosystem at this point, and despite being an engineer, I'm not, like, super interested in consumer technology. I just want stuff that just works. And I feel like, at least back in the day with Android, it was like you had to kind of play around with things to make it work in a particular way. Whereas with iPhone, it's just I open it up and I can use the stuff that I need to use and that's it. So.

ADRIANA: So, yeah, I'm. I'm with you on that as well. I. I do like the. Everything works, Everything's nicely integrated, it plays well. Nice. And, you know, the. The folks who love Android, I think one of the reasons they love it is, oh, you can configure everything.

ADRIANA: And my. My thought is like, but I don't want to.

MICHAEL: Like, no, yeah, I'm doing that 90% of my day. I just don't want to do it in my personal time either.

ADRIANA: Yeah, it's not fun to me. It was fun, like, I don't know...

MICHAEL: Years ago.

ADRIANA: Yeah, exactly. When I was younger.

MICHAEL: Exactly. Yeah. Like, I remember, like, I had Android phones and I was jailbreaking them, and then I had like the Windows phones when they were popular for three minutes and then, you know. Yeah. And then it was like, eventually I just had to switch back and just. I just wanted something that just worked, you know?

ADRIANA: Yes, I am with you on that. Okay. Similar vein, do you prefer Mac, Linux, or Windows?

MICHAEL: Mac. But there are certain things that are irritating me that I'm thinking about going back to Windows. Like, you know, like, for example, I can't tell you how many times I build a Docker image, then I try to deploy it to a particular place, and I'm like, why isn't this working? And then I'm like, oh, that's right, because I'm building on ARM. Yeah, and then there's. Yeah, and then there's even, like. So I'm really into the security realm and stuff, and there are certain things that I can't do. So for example, there's this website called VulnHub, which is awesome. It's literally just a whole bunch of AMIs that are built with vulnerability.

So let's say you want to test or practice something from a pen testing perspective. You can download these AMIs and then you can spin them up in VMware Player, VirtualBox or whatever you're using for your Type 1 hypervisor. But they're not ARM based.

ADRIANA: Yes.

MICHAEL: Like, I can't use them on my Mac and I have like my Windows box back there, which I can do it on, but I'm like, it's just a pain, you know? Or like, let's say like I'm speaking at a conference or something. It's like, I want to demo something, but I can't because of this. I just. Yeah. So I've been thinking about going back to Mac, which would be the first. Er. Mac Windows, which will be the first time in like six, seven years.

ADRIANA: Oh, damn. Yeah, you make a very good point with the, with the Docker images and ARM. Like, that has caused me so much grief recently.

MICHAEL: It's a pain.

ADRIANA: Like, I can't even tell you. And. And then also, like, I don't know if this is still true. I haven't checked for a while, but I think, like, you can run VirtualBox on M1 Macs.

MICHAEL: Yeah, yeah. No, you totally can. Yeah. Like, even, like, I have. Yeah. I have VMware Fusion even on it right now because I'll like, I have a Kali VM, but Kali is like a pen testing distro that I'll run locally and stuff because it's not my daily driver. But like I can run those VMs. But if anything is built with AMD base 64 or whatever, it's all about the architecture.

So even whatever the extension is for VMs, right, that AMI. You can exist, you could download it and stuff, but then it'll say, oh, you can't run it because your architecture. And you're like, yeah. Apple should have given an option like go Intel or go ARM. But yeah, so.

ADRIANA: I definitely feel your frustration on that one. Okay, next question. What's your favorite programming language?

MICHAEL: I'm comfortable and Go, but it depends on the use case. Right. So like programming languages to me are, are really nothing more than a tool to get a job done. Yeah. So like I'll use Go just because I, I enjoy it and I'm comfy in it. But from like a security perspective, a lot of Python and PowerShell, because those are like the two primary like scripting based languages. And from a security perspective, the majority, whether you're doing blue teaming, red teaming, purple AppSec, cloud sec, whatever, the majority of the time writing automation with your code. So it kind of makes sense to go the Python or the PowerShell route. I could do it in Go, but it's like nobody else is really doing it. So then it won't work in certain scenarios or people won't be comfortable with it in certain scenarios, so.

ADRIANA: Oh, cool. That's. That's really interesting.

MICHAEL: Yeah, Yeah, I love Go. I, I started out PowerShell, Python. I moved to Go years ago. I teach like Go training. So like I'll, I'll teach live trainings, teaching people Go. So I'm, I'm super comfy in that realm.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Python or PowerShell, it's pretty much the way to go from a security standpoint.

ADRIANA: Good to know. All right, next question. Do you prefer Dev or Ops?

MICHAEL: Which one? I don't know. I, I'm, I think because of the way that my brain works, if I had to choose to just do one, it would be development because I'm very logistical, left side of the brain. Like, I like, I like research and I like logistical based jobs. So I think programming gives me more of that and I've done both. Like, I started out my career in systems administration and help desk and all that. Around the middle of my career I moved to software development. And then I just found myself somewhere in the middle. Right. Yeah, whatever you want to call it. Platform, SRE, DevOps, whatever. Whatever title is catchy nowadays. So, like, I've done kind of a little bit of everything and I've played with all different pieces of technology. But what I will say is, like, I don't think I can do one without the other anymore. Like, I wouldn't be a good developer if I didn't understand infrastructure. And I wouldn't be good at infrastructure and systems and networks and containerization and Kubernetes if I didn't understand development. So I. There's. I feel like the, the lines are so blurred in today's world that you really need both. But yeah, if I had to choose, like, what I was going to do, probably, like, writing code.

ADRIANA: Awesome. And, you know, I love what you said there about, like, really the lines blurring and having to understand both. Because I so agree with you. And I've had, I've had arguments with people over this because in the past, like, when I was managing teams and I was hiring folks for my team, like, I was hiring developers for my team, but I needed them to, like, have an understanding also of, like, the infrastructure side of things, like how to containerize your applications. And I was really surprised by the number of, like, resumes that I got or even like, you know, if they made it to the interview process of people who had no experience containerizing their, their own applications. And I'm like. But aren't you, like, remotely curious as to how that works? I don't know.

MICHAEL: That's the problem.

ADRIANA: Yeah, it's just so surprising because for me it's like, of course you're going to learn how to do that.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Yeah. And it's. That curiosity is drastically important, especially in today's world. So, like, we've. Tech is weird. Like, it has gone from being this, like, really particular career for, for nerdy people. Right.

And then it kind of went mainstream. Like, tech now is very much like, tech is buzzy and it's trendy and it's like, people like it because it's cool and like, I don't know when tech became cool, but it's. It's cool now. But what ended up happening was so many people, so many people got into it because it was cool and because it was trendy and all this stuff. Right. Which is okay. But the problem is, is that those people very rarely are putting in the same amount of work and effort that like, engineers were putting in before it was cool. And trendy and, and the interest isn't there.

And that's why, you know, and hot, hot take. You know, people may be irritated about how to. People may get irritated because I'm saying this, but like, I think that's also a big problem with like why people are having such hard time finding and getting jobs. And look, I'm not, I, I understand there's been like over 300, 000 layoffs between, you know, the large tech companies. I'm not dismissing that. But what I also do know is like, I have friends recently that have gotten laid off and within three to four weeks they had four job offers because they're very, very good at what they do. And, and it's not because they're geniuses, but it's because they are very interested and like, they want to know the way things work and how they work and how they come together. And if you don't have that, it's very difficult to find a job.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I so agree with you because I honestly think that's like the heart and soul of tech is being curious. And curious enough to learn new things because tech moves so fast that if you don't learn new things then you're, you're like outdated.

MICHAEL: One hundred percent. Yeah, yeah. And it, it makes things really weird when you're self employed. Like I'm self employed and you kind of have to like pick a direction. I think at this point where it's like, are you going to be trendy or are you going to be more educational based? Like, my content is very educational based. It's very like, I'm gonna show you how to do a thing. Yeah, I'm it. This is just not my personality. I'm just not the guy that's like putting on the YouTube voice and like doing the camera angles and this.

MICHAEL: It's not me. It's never been me. If I did it, it would be disingenuous.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah.

MICHAEL: But in that realm, if you take that route, you know, and you're doing like vendor content and stuff, which I do vendor content. I just don't do that type of vendor content. You could pull in 5, 400, 500,000 a year USD. Like it's very manageable and reasonable to do that. But then you got to take a certain. But then if you do the educational route, like I, I backed off from that and I went the educational route. And you're not making that in the educational route, but that education. The reason why I'm saying all this is because that educational route if you keep that level of engineering mindset, it will make your life easier to get jobs because you'll be curious and because you'll be interested in what you're kind of doing, you know, versus the people that if you're just turning on the camera and just talking about stuff, it's fine and there's a place for that. But it's also going to be very, very difficult to find a job in tech now because of that.

ADRIANA: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, next question. Do you prefer JSON or YAML?

MICHAEL: Oh, neither. Is that an option?

ADRIANA: I mean, it's an option.

MICHAEL: So I guess.

ADRIANA: Tell me why you like neither.

MICHAEL: Yeah, so I, I guess I would, you know, go with YAML because so in the Kubernetes realm, when I'm like, just so invested in. Embedded in the Kubernetes realm at this point out of the box, you can use JSON and YAML natively with Kubernetes, but you just 1000% of the time you're always going to see examples in YAML. You're never going to see them in JSON, but natively you can use both. I think in, in all seriousness, I think I would choose probably YAML. I think JSON is like, the more you add to it, the more convoluted it is. Hence why, you know, Microsoft switched from ARM templates to Bicep. Because it was just. People were looking at ARM templates and it was like, this is a. There's a lot happening here. And this is, it's really easy to misconfigure. I think that's why I would choose YAML. I think with JSON it's just far easier to misconfigure your environment with JSON as it gets longer than with YAML.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I agree. I find YAML a lot more legible. I know, like, people get really, like annoyed by the spaces thing. I mean, me too. But I. It's so much more legible compared to JSON. It's like just a blob of characters when I look at.

MICHAEL: Yeah.

ADRIANA: JASON and I, I, yeah.

MICHAEL: Yeah, 100%. It's always funny to like the tabs and spaces thing. I don't know if, like, if you ever, if you watch the show Silicon Valley.

ADRIANA: Oh, yes. Actually, that's my next question.

MICHAEL: Yeah, I love when Richard, like, I forget, I forget the chick that he was dating, but like using space and he's freaks out and has to leave. Oh, so freaking funny.

ADRIANA: Oh yeah, yeah, I love that. Like, that one little, like, you know, scene is Just like, just magic. Magic.

MICHAEL: So funny. So funny.

ADRIANA: And that's perfect because my next question is, do you prefer tabs or spaces?

MICHAEL: You know what I prefer? I prefer clicking option shift F in VS code because it just does it for me. I don't have to like worry about like the tabs and spaces with like the auto formatting and VS code anymore. Um, but yeah, I think spaces. Cause sometimes with YAML it's like. So a tab is four spaces, I think. Right. But with YAML, like, sometimes you. You can only do two, like two spaces. So like, then it like screws up the formatting and. But even if the formatting is messed up anyways, it's just like command shift after or option shift F, whatever it is. And then it like formats everything. So. So it's less of a hassle nowadays. But I think spaces.

ADRIANA: There you go. Hot tip on formatting. Yeah, I actually switched from spaces. Sorry, from tabs to spaces because of that, with the formatting in YAML where I think it defaulted to the tab, as you said, being four spaces. And then I open YAML documents. That was two. I'm like.

MICHAEL: The nice thing too with VS code and pretty much any IDE at this point is when if I'm on a line and if I hit enter, like it will put me where I should be going.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

MICHAEL: And so. So it's kind of like you really don't have to think about it anymore at this point. Which is nice. Yeah. Because that's. And, and. But it was more important like years ago, like there were languages, like whether you were using garbage collection or not, that it was like spaces would take up more memory once you were compiled. So. Yeah, I mean, I don't think that really. I don't know if it matters anymore. I haven't ran a benchmark against that in like 10 years, so I wouldn't know if it still matter. Yeah. So fun to talk about though.

ADRIANA: Yeah, totally. It always, it always provides for some like, very interesting conversation every time.

MICHAEL: 100%.

ADRIANA: Okay, next question. Do you prefer to consume content through video or text?

MICHAEL: If I'm trying to do something quick video. But I like reading. So one of one of my, you know, mental health things is 30 minutes a day. I. At least 30 minutes a day I carve out to read. And it's always a technical base book. Like I'm always reading something about a new practice or a new something in a language or a certification thing or whatever. Like I'm always reading stuff.

ADRIANA: So what are you currently reading then?

MICHAEL: What am I currently. Let me, Let me. Let me pull up my Kindle app because I'm reading like, four different things at the moment and I want to make sure I have the titles correct. So one thing that I'm reading, because for like, security based contracts, like government based contracts and DoD based contracts, I need certain CompTIA certifications. So Pentest plus by CompTIA, currently going through that. Again, it's needed for, like, DOD contracts and stuff. This is a really awesome book. Tanya Janca, if you're familiar with her, SheHacksPurple. She. She has, like, some really awesome content. She wrote a book called Alice and Bob Learn Application Security. Oh, yeah, It's a really cool one. Yeah. Yeah. And then Black Hat Python is another really good one. But I'm always bouncing back and forth, honestly.

So one thing that I do as well, and I. I do this because I apparently enjoy pain, where I'll read like three to five books at a time and then I'll forget like 70% of it. So then I just keep going back and reading the same thing over and over again. So, yeah, it's fun. So that's a good. Yeah.

ADRIANA: Okay, final question. What is your superpower?

MICHAEL: Oh, God. Getting annoyed? No, I think that I am really. I'm. I'm open to more and more information, and I think that's. That's what I've always been really good at. Like, even, like in the beginning and in the middle of my career, like, I have gone. I've walked into job interviews where I didn't know 90% of what they were talking about, but I let them know, like, I'll figure it out. And they're like, all right, can you figure it out in two weeks before the job starts? And I'm like, yep. And I'll just. I'll sit there and like, throw myself into things for weeks and weeks and weeks to figure out how stuff works again. Maybe it goes back to the enjoyment of pain or just the enjoyment of learning. I don't really know exactly what it is, but, yeah, I'm just. I'm. I'm. I'm not, like, out of the box smart, right? Like, I wasn't, like, an A student in school and stuff. And, you know, I don't have a fancy degree or anything, but I'm just really good at, like, taking a problem and figuring it out. It may take me longer than. Than other times. It may throw me down, you know, a bottle of bourbon. But at some point, I will figure it out because I'll just keep kind of hammering it out until I fully understand what's happening.

ADRIANA: That is such a great superpower, and I think it's such an important one for working in tech is just like the perseverance and, and as you said, like the openness. Because I think one thing that I, I've experienced in the workplace in the past is being on a team and, and folks being asked to, like, do something and they're like, but I don't know how to do that. And, you know, passing the buck to someone else because they didn't want to be bothered rather than, oh, this is like a really cool learning experience and you might get something out of it.

MICHAEL: One hundred percent. Yeah. I mean, there's, there's this curiosity aspect of it as well, but then there's also like, the life aspect. Like, I, I'm a firm believer that, like, what you've gone through in life will kind of dictate how much pain you're able to take. Right. And that's, and that's why people don't, like, want to go out and learn this and that and this and that. Because they, people like to be comfortable, right? Yeah, they don't like to not be, you know, they don't like to be comfortable being uncomfortable. And that's always been something that I've been able to be decent enough at where, like, I'm okay with being uncomfortable.

ADRIANA: Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's definitely a really good, good skill to have. And it, you know, it makes me think too, to like, especially like in so many organizations when they're doing, you know, digital transformations, agile transformations, DevOps transformations, where you're basically asking your employees to, like, change the way that they work. And you see so much resistance. Like, I, I worked at a bank for many years and I was part of a massive, like, DevOps transformation. And it was funny that we had, I feel like we had the dev part figured out. Like, we had the really good CI/CD pipelines, but the hardest part was actually getting the delivery to really embrace those DevOps principles. So it was more like we got the CI. It was the CD that was really holding us back because the folks who worked in ops were, eh, I don't want to learn this new thing.

MICHAEL: Yeah.

ADRIANA: And it was a detriment to them, but also to the organization because they couldn't move forward.

MICHAEL: And that's still how it is. I mean, that's why if you're a good engineer, you can pretty much go and name your price at an organization, you know, like, depending on where you're. Well, I would argue that this shouldn't even matter, but it does. For whatever reason, like depending on where you are in the world, like you should be able to name your price, right?

ADRIANA: Yeah.

MICHAEL: Like, if you're like, hey, I should be making 220 a year and you know, you're that good. Yeah, you could go and you can name that price.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

MICHAEL: You know, but yeah, I mean I think that's the big. Again going back to what we were talking about before, like, that's the differentiator right between like, are you going to get a job or are you going to be laid off for three, four years?

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, that brings us to the conclusion of our lightning round question. So thank you for playing. And I wanted to get now into, you know, the, the meaty bits and before we, we started recording, we were talking about how you do a bunch of security work, which you alluded to also in the, in the lightning round questions. So first question is, what got you interested in security in the first place?

MICHAEL: Yeah. So I've been really. And for any, anybody that like takes a look at my content or sees what I've been doing over the years, I've been always really focused in the Kubernetes realm. I have written books on Kubernetes, I've spoken at conferences on Kubernetes, hundreds of blogs, hundreds of videos, podcasts, everything. And I kind of reached a point where so the way that my for better force, the way that my brain works is if I feel like I don't have a purpose. And my purpose is always career related. It always has been. Just because the way I was raised and my life and all these different things, if I'm not doing something that's really hard, I'm like drastically depressed.

Like I've had, you know, mental health issues and all these different things and it usually comes back to because I'm not challenged.

ADRIANA: Mm.

MICHAEL: So I chose security because after I like stayed in Kubernetes for years and the thing was in the Kubernetes realm now, like you could give me any topic to talk about to go speak at a conference to write a book on and like I don't really have to do any research. Like I don't really have to do any prep. Like I've walked into conference talks with zero prep. Like, because I just know it. Like I just. Because I was focused in it for so long. So I wanted to. My next challenge I wanted to think about what can I do that's incredibly hard. That not a lot of people can do really well, and that is a constant, growing pain. And I came across security.

ADRIANA: Ah.

MICHAEL: Yeah. So I just. I just. I was like, what's the most painful thing I can work on right now? And that's what I came up with, yeah. Yep, yep. Yeah. And then for me, it wasn't even like, let me go blue team or red team. It was like, let me go application security. Because application security is arguably the one that, like, it seems like nobody can get right. So I was like, all right, let's do the thing that nobody can figure out. I'll go down that route. So, yeah.

ADRIANA: There you are.

MICHAEL: Here I am.

ADRIANA: I actually wanted to go back to something that you mentioned because I can so relate to it, where you said not feeling challenged lead led to you having, like, mental health issues. Because it was. And I can so relate because I have found that. So I've gone between manager and IC roles in. In the past, and I realize that every time I'm in a management role, I'm depressed because I feel like I'm not doing something, like, cool and engaging.

MICHAEL: Right.

ADRIANA: And it's so interesting to meet someone else who has experienced something like that and that. It, like, you know, it. It. It's. It's validating in a way. You know, like, it's. Yeah.

MICHAEL: So. It's so I can, you know, I don't know how. How deep you want. You want me to go here with it with these answers, but I've seen a lot of mental health issues, like, throughout my life. Like, I grew up incredibly poor. Both of my parents were drug addicts and alcoholics. You know, we were in apartments with bedbugs. We were in apartments where there were no bedrooms. It was a studio. Like, I. I went through a good, nice chunk of my life where, like, I didn't have my own bedroom. I've. I've. I've been, like, through, like, really bad times. And then I've been to the point where I own my home and I drive the car that I want to drive. And, you know, I'm. I'm. You know, the. The money that I can make is more than I ever even thought possible. Right. I didn't go to college. None of it. Like, I could. College wasn't even an option because I just needed to start working. So, like, I've seen. And I've seen everything that comes with growing up like that.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

MICHAEL: You know, I've had a lot of mental health issues where I had a stroke due to depression. Like, a lot of big things. Yeah. So, like, I'VE seen, like, I've gone down the. Down the, the deepest, darkest mental health issues that you could possibly imagine. And the one thing that I found. And I. I did the yoga and the meditation and the medication and the several. Talking to several therapists and psychiatrists, and it's always fun to talk to psychiatrists and therapists when they're like, we don't know what's wrong. And you're like, oh, I. I guess I. I won the game of therapy when you, when you have to. When you stump the therapist. Right.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

MICHAEL: So I've done all of this and what I found that brings me out of it. And this is. Again, this is just my personal opinion. This is going through again, everything that I went through in my life, being in such a dark place where my body literally tried to shut itself down.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

MICHAEL: Medication, therapy, all this stuff. It is. It's great to sprinkle on top.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

MICHAEL: But the only thing that's going to actually bring you out of it is figuring out what the underlying issue is. And the majority of the time, the underlying issue is purpose. It's finding purpose in life.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

MICHAEL: And driving that purpose. That's why you look at people like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos and, And Elon Musk and Joe Rogan and whoever, all these people. And look, I'm not. I don't want, you know, that there's the conversation of, well, what about these people's personalities? They suc. I don't care about that. What I'm. What I more care about is, like, how people are and how they move through life and how they navigate. And all these people, you know, and tons of others.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

MICHAEL: They're multimillionaires and multi billionaires.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

MICHAEL: They don't have to work anymore, nor do the 20 generations after them. What keeps them going is not financial. What keeps them going is purpose. They have a particular purpose in life, and that's what drives them. So I'm a firm believer that purpose in life is what takes you out of dark places. And for me, it's always been career, you know, So I totally understand and agree with you. Where it's like, you can't be in something that you're bored because then you're going to be depressed and you're going to be drinking and you're not going to be working out and you're going to be eating crappy food all the time just because you need some type of escape and it just. It brings you down this, like.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah.

MICHAEL: Really bad hole.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I agree it's like, you. You need to give yourself a mission, a meaningful mission. Like, whenever I feel like I've got, like, okay, I have a goal, I'm like, I'm all in. Even if it sounds, like, ridiculous and, like, I have no idea how I'm gonna achieve it, but I'm like, I think it's achievable. And. And I think that's the other thing. Like, if you think it's achievable, even if it's hard, I think on the most part, it gets achieved.

MICHAEL: One hundred percent. One hundred percent. And I mean that. I think that's the same for anybody. Right?

ADRIANA: Yeah.

MICHAEL: So to your point, it's like, if you have a purpose, if you have a dri-...if you have drive, if you have any of these things, you could sleep three hours a night and get up and go. Right. Your life could be however it is. But if you have this thing that you're driving towards, it will be exceptionally better for you than anything else. Any medication, any therapy, any. Anything. And I'm not telling everybody, stop doing all that stuff. What I'm saying is you're not going to find the underlying cause of your. Your issues with that. Right? I didn't. Right. Nobody that I know that's gone through it has. Everybody's got to find purpose. That's. It's such a. It's. It's the most important. And your purpose could be your kids. Your purpose could be making sure you have a clean home. Your purpose could be being a digital nomad. Right. And living in different places every year, every six months. Whatever your per.

MICHAEL: I don't care what it is. Find it. That's going to be the thing that's going to help you in life the most.

ADRIANA: Yeah. It's the thing that gets you out of bed, basically.

MICHAEL: Yeah.

ADRIANA: You're, like, excited to tackle the day. Like, I. I find, like, especially when I'm in the midst of solving a gnarly problem, if, like, the previous day I made some sort of breakthrough and, you know, the. The next day I wake up all excited because I'm like, I get to work on this some more. And I'll even, like, wake up before my alarm because, like, I can't stop thinking about it. And it so excites me and it so drives me.

MICHAEL: Yeah, 100%. Yeah. Yeah. And usually it. No, not usually. I mean, 100% of the time, it really. It's no financial gain. It's no. It's nothing external. Right. It's all intrinsic factors that make you get out of bed in the morning and go do what you want to do. And again, it goes back to, you know, that's why all of these millionaires and billionaires, like, they don't have to do anything.

ADRIANA: Yep, yep, anything.

MICHAEL: They could sit there in front of their TV and drink bourbon and eat pizza for the rest of their lives and do it incredibly comfortably.

ADRIANA: Oh, yeah.

MICHAEL: In a, in, In a smooth 70 degree house like this, life could be freaking awesome.

ADRIANA: Cushy.

MICHAEL: Yeah. And, but they don't do it like that because, like, they have to have some type of purpose because that's, that's what drives you in life.

ADRIANA: Yeah, totally agree. Now, I wanted to switch gears back to the security topic because there's a couple of things that I want to ask. First of all, you know, you know, you mentioned that you got into application security because as you said, seldom, like, people get it right. What do you like specifically? What is, what is it that you think that people don't usually get right when it comes to application security?

MICHAEL: The number one thing is you don't fully understand the underlying system. So, and I always say this security is pretty easy. Like the act of securing something is relatively straightforward. Right. The hard part is understanding where you're securing. It's the same thing with writing code. I can teach any. I can, I can take anybody off the street and teach them how to write a function and a method and a class. What I can't do is take anybody and teach them how to properly architect an application stack and get it done right and get it deployed right. Same thing with security. I can teach anybody how to go use Burp Suite and how to spin up a Kali Linux box and play around with Metasploit and use code scanning and SAST tools and DAST tools and SCAP tools, and I can teach anybody how to do any of this stuff. But what I can't teach them is, okay, I'm going to go and I'm going to run these tools and I'm going to use these tools. Now what? Oh, I found a vulnerability. Now what? Oh, there's an issue in a library. Now what? What's the fix? How do I implement change? You can't, you can't teach everybody that. And I think that's why.

And even if you go, you, you know, you look on Reddit or you look on other forums, the number one question I would say and like, said the cyber security arena right now is, hey, I just graduated college and I want to go and do cyber security. No, you don't need to know what you're securing, you can't literally by definition you cannot secure what you do not know. And I think that's the hardest part. The hardest part is not security. The hardest part is understanding the underlying system, network, application, container, whatever. So well, yeah, that you know what it, how it works inside and out. That's the really hard part of security.

ADRIANA: Do you think that's one of those things that would come with experience?

MICHAEL: 100%. Yeah. That's why you know, you have like SOC style roles, security operations center. Right. Where pretty much their job is just like, oh, vulnerability come in, came in, let me triage it and send it to where it needs to go. Yeah, you could do stuff like that.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

MICHAEL: But anything more defending systems, pen testing, red teaming, application security, like you cannot do this unless you understand what you are securing. So if you have experience like anybody that has 10, 20 years of infrastructure experience can go do system security. Anybody that's been a software engineer for 10, 20 years can go do AppSec. You just need to like learn the tools and the terminology and there's a lot of terminology in security space. I don't know why it's worse than cloud native. There's so much terminology and I'm like, oh, why are we called like, can we just name these five things the way that they are and leave it at that? Yeah, it's so strange to me, but yeah, it's. Yeah. So yeah, like if you, if you know something very, very well, like if you know the underlying platform very, very well, security is, is relatively straightforward.

ADRIANA: Right, right. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Now another question I want to ask. I remember when the DevOps movement started gaining traction and everyone's like, shift left, shift left and then shift left on security. Do you think that organizations are truly shifting left on security? And if not, why like, why do you suspect that they might not be?

MICHAEL: No, I mean there are so many breaches all the time that like they're clearly not. Even like, you know, like the, the like people only. So it, security is very comparable to life. Right. You only make a change in life if things go wrong.

ADRIANA: Oh my God.

MICHAEL: Nobody, like very rarely do people do like preventative maintenance in life.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, right, like, absolutely.

MICHAEL: If you go to the gym five days a week and you eat decently healthy, where let's say you eat, you know, three meals a day and you know, two to three of those meals per week or just whatever you want, it's pretty good preventative maintenance. Yeah. But the majority of people don't do preventative maintenance in life and they, nor do they insecurity until something goes wrong. That's why like Microsoft now, like Microsoft has been releasing all this stuff where their, their engineers now supposedly, who knows if this is true, but they're not going to be judged just based on like code quality and stuff. Like they're going to be judged based on security posture.

ADRIANA: Oh good.

MICHAEL: That's interesting stuff. Yeah, yeah, really interesting stuff. So I think the shift left. So the shift left thing, right, like if we break this down and because it's so buzzy, but if we, if we break it down, what's application security? What's AppSec? AppSec is securing the entire SDLC process.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

MICHAEL: From the thought of this is going to be a thing to the idea, to the libraries we're using, to the language we're using, to the deployment process. Shift left is around this whole DevSecOps thing, right?

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah.

MICHAEL: So if you ask somebody what's DevSecOps securing the entire SDLC process. Why do we have three names for this? I have no idea. We have three names for the same exact thing. It's the same. There's no difference. If you take shift left, SDL-, AppSec and DevSecOps, it's literally all the same thing. There's no differentiation between these three things. So we unfortunately like have a lot of buzz because, you know, look, look, I'm. Vendors got to make money, right. They got to make it somehow. Right? And so they got to make stuff up that sounds cool. So they can sell their products. I get it. Yeah, we all, we all got to make money, but it just causes a lot of confusion, I think, unfortunately.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I agree. I, I gotta say I always found the term DevSec Ops a little cringe. Only because my thought is like, isn't security supposed to be baked into DevOps in the first place? So yeah, every time I hear that I'm like, yeah.

MICHAEL: And it's, it's, it's tough too. Right. So it's like you could go and look at my LinkedIn posts and, and, and I always like, I don't, I, I don't know why. This is just society, I suppose. But like I'll create LinkedIn posts that are like really, like have a lot of really good stuff in there. Yeah, yeah, but I'll use terminology that people don't know maybe like perfect timing and pen testing and AppSec and stuff. And they don't, they don't get what I'm saying. So it doesn't it doesn't really go anywhere.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

MICHAEL: But then if I throw something and I've, I've, I've, I've tested this out and unfortunately proven it to be true. If I put DevSecOps in.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

MICHAEL: Gets a lot of traction. So it's the unfortunate reality of, you know, what the, the world that we live in right now because that's just what people know. And, and these aren't people that are just marketing people. Like I talked to really, really solid engineers and they say DevSecOps. And the reason why they say it is because they're hearing it. The reason that they're hearing is because marketing is incredible. In, in today's tech world, it's really good. Like some of these vendors are really solid with their marketing.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

MICHAEL: And that's just what people know now. So it's like, you know, you gotta, you gotta do it. It's weird, but is what it is.

ADRIANA: I, I agree.

MICHAEL: Yeah.

ADRIANA: Yeah, it is funny. The, the LinkedIn algorithm is always, always an interesting one to wrangle.

MICHAEL: Yeah, it's, and you know what's so funny about it too? Like getting solid content out in the world, it sucks. But it's not about how good you are at something. No, it's really just about how good you are at phrasing things. Um, and, and luckily I've just been a writer for so long now that it's like I've just kind of hit the nail on the head with it. Yeah. But like, I remember when I first became self employed, I was like, I'm a good engineer, everybody's gonna hire me. Yeah. I, I, I found out the, the quick and hard way that that's not the way things work. So yeah, it's, it's really all about, you know, that verbiage for people.

ADRIANA: Yeah, it's true. And, and seeming approachable and, and whatnot to folks. The, the other thing, it's funny, I've had a couple conversations with folks, especially around LinkedIn posts. And actually my, so my friend Hazel Weekly and I were talking about like, why is it that when I just, you know, I have these nice thought out LinkedIn posts, like, they get like, so, so traction and then when I post something out of like, you know, emotional rage or shitpost, it gets traction. And then Hazel, like, I think later that day wrote a shitpost about shitposting and, and she's like, I got so much traction on this, more so than the other stuff. And it's like, oh my God. It just like proved what we were discussing.

MICHAEL: I, I so I'll give you an example right as we're, I'll, I'll, I'll take a look at this live. So I'm looking at my LinkedIn post as we speak now. I put something together two hours ago. It literally did not get any likes and any comments. 379 impressions. That is awful. But it was, it was a carousel explaining certain AppSec tools, why you would use them and where to find them. Right. It got no traction. None. But then if I scroll down to where is this one? Oh, here we go. I wrote, "Networking is ridiculously important in Kubernetes. It's one of the core skills that all engineers need. There are a ton of different components. Pod IPs, container IPs, DNS, firewalls, and a lot more. I highly recommend learning these things."

MICHAEL: This is pretty much nothing, right? Like I pretty much just said nothing in my post. 111 likes, 10,000 impressions. It doesn't make any sense.

ADRIANA: Holy crap.

MICHAEL: Yeah, so it's, it's a really like weird world that we live in where it's like you pretty much just say nothing and people are like, "Sick!" and then you say stuff that's important and people are like, don't like that at all.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, it's so bizarre. And then especially like when you have like this lovely, well crafted post and there's like, you know, hardly any impressions, hardly any likes and it's like nobody loves me now. Another question that I wanted to ask you around security is, you know, there's, there's the age old battle between InfoSec and developers. What kind of, what kinds of things are you seeing out in the wild with regards to this? Like do you think it's getting any better or what do you, what do you think think is kind of the main cause of this?

MICHAEL: You know what's so ironic about this question too. I'm so happy that you brought this up because I so oftentimes I argue with myself, right? For better or for worse. I just. Multiple personalities in here and I have a lot of arguments and disagreements with everybody that's in here. And a lot of the developer security issues, right, are really all about this. It's everything that we know. This security person told me I have to change this and it's going to break this and it doesn't work with this. Right? This is the security thing that we all know.

Why does this happen? Well, very straightforward. The security person is running a vulnerability assessment. These vulnerability assessments say this thingy over here is broken. Go fix that thingy and then they throw it over the wall. The reason why the security person is doing that is because, and I'm not trying to sound rude or anything, this is just open honestness. They don't know what they're talking about. If you have any security measure that you are recommending and it is going to break something, that means you do not understand the underlying application, the understand. The underlying libraries, understanding packages, and how this application stack is created. There is no security issue that should ever break a system when it's integrated.

The only time that you may have an issue is when you're doing a vulnerability assessment that has a third, that's scanning a third party package or library that has a security vulnerability inside of it. Because you essentially have three options. You become an open source maintainer for that library package and you fix it. You accept what it is, or you take it out and you find another way to write that piece of your code. That's really the only time that something could break your application stack. But what ends up happening is a lot of security folks, they'll say, this thingy is broken over here, go take out that thingy. Because we have something, something compliance and something something need and something something management and something something something something. But they don't really know the why.

And that really just goes back to what we were talking about before, where it's like you need to understand what you are securing. If you do not understand the way these things work underneath the hood, you will piss everybody off. That's what it comes down to. And again, this isn't like me trying to. I'm just really passionate about this and I'm like this right now because it gets me kind of going. And I'm like, this is why we have so many. And this is why we have problems in tech in general thinking about security. This is, this is why we have so many problems.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, thanks for shedding some light on that. We are coming up on time and I'm sad because I could just keep asking me so many questions around this. But before we go, do you have any either hot takes or words of wisdom that you want to share with folks?

MICHAEL: Yeah, I mean if I could give anybody in tech regard, regardless of what direction you go in engineering help desk, systems administration, virtualization, cloud, DevOps software, whatever it is, just get really good at what you're trying to do. And this is something that's going to take years, but if you're really good at it, if you're really good at one thing. What you you'll learn two things. Number one, you'll be able to name your price at any job. Number two, you're going to begin to understand that a lot of this stuff overlaps. And then you'll realize, oh, because I got really good at this one thing, I think I actually understand a little bit of everything, and it's going to help you tremendously throughout your career.

ADRIANA: Yeah. That is such great advice. Well, that's awesome. Well, thank you so much, Michael, for geeking out with me today. And y'all, don't forget to subscribe and be sure to check the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media. Until next time...

MICHAEL: Peace out and geek out.

ADRIANA: Geeking Out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Villela. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking Out is also produced by my daughter, Hannah Maxwell, who incidentally designed all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the socials by going to bento.me/geekingout.

The One Where We Geek Out on Ruby x OTel with Kayla Reopelle of New Relic

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Adriana Villela, Hannah Maxwell, Kayla Reopelle) — Tue, 10 Dec 2024 05:00:00 +0000

About our guest:

Kayla is an engineer on the New Relic Ruby agent team and an active member of the OpenTelemetry Ruby community, where she's a maintainer for opentelemetry-ruby-contrib and an approver for opentelemetry-ruby. Outside of work, she enjoys cycling and tinkering in her garden.

Find our guest on:

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show notes:

Transcript:
ADRIANA: Hey, fellow geeks. Welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. and geeking out with me today, I have Kayla Reopelle of New Relic. Welcome, Kayla.

KAYLA: Hi. Thank you. Happy to be here.

ADRIANA: I'm super excited to have you on. And where are you calling from today?

KAYLA: I'm calling from Portland, Oregon.

ADRIANA: Awesome. I've had a few people from Portland. There's a big tech community in Portland, isn't there?

KAYLA: Yeah, yeah. They. At one point it was called the Silicon Forest, but I don't know if it has that same reputation.

ADRIANA: That's awesome. Are you originally from Portland, or...

KAYLA: No, I'm originally from a small town kind of near Mount Rainier in Washington state, but kind of grew up in the Pacific Northwest, so.

ADRIANA: Oh, cool. That's awesome. It's. You know, I always chat with people who, who grew up in the Pacific Northwest and it's such a different vibe from east coast life. Like, it's so much more outdoorsy, focused in the Pacific Northwest, which I absolutely love. Like here, where I live, in Toronto, it's like, it's flat. So, you know, I go out west, I'm like, oh, it's...The mountains are so pretty. I so miss that.

KAYLA: Yeah. Yeah. The times that I've lived other places, I. I miss seeing the mountains on the horizon. For sure.

ADRIANA: Yeah. You cannot beat that. Well, awesome. Are you ready to do our icebreaker questions?

KAYLA: Sure.

ADRIANA: Okay, let's do it. Question number one. Are you a lefty or a righty?

KAYLA: I'm a lefty.

ADRIANA: Oh, my God. I always get so excited when I meet fellow lefties. Yeah. I love learning. I. I love identifying other lefties. I. I've mentioned this multiple times in the show, so if anyone's listening and bored of hearing this. But like, I always, I'm always like watching, you know, what hand people grab things with, and I'm like lefty. And I feel like it's the thing that only lefties will probably notice anyway.

KAYLA: Yeah, yeah. Right. We're like a small enough percentage that it. It kind of catches you off guard. It's a little bit exciting.

ADRIANA: Exactly. And I, I don't know if you do this, but like, my coat hangers go like my clothes hang in my coat hangers in a very particular direction compared to like right handed people or even like where I put my knives in the knife bl. In the knife block.

KAYLA: Mm.

ADRIANA: But yeah, that that's from like living in a house of, of right handed people where they outnumber me but I impose my will upon them.

KAYLA: Nice. Nice. Yeah. Growing up there was always like a decent balance because my dad was also left handed. But you know, as an adult, like sharing a house with another with a right handed person, it's like the kitchen set up every time the. Where the cutting board is placed versus where the appliances are placed and the food.

ADRIANA: It's like exactly how you turn, like. The handle for your frying pan. Like what, where it's oriented as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

KAYLA: And I've even looked at that sometimes when I've gone to like look at apartments or something. It's like, okay, where is the elbow space for?

ADRIANA: Yes.

KAYLA: Like, will it work?

ADRIANA: Or even like something silly like sitting down to a meal. And if you're sitting next to a right handed person, you need to be on the outside so you're not like butting elbows when you eat, which right-handed people don't think about.

KAYLA: Yeah, yeah, I know it, it like can cause sometimes a little bit of anxiety of like, okay, am I gonna get one of the two correct spots at this table?

ADRIANA: Exactly.

KAYLA: Yep.

ADRIANA: And, and one, one follow up question on, on leftiness. Because I, I find like lefties. Well, I mean already by default, like, lefties hold their pencils like really weird. I hold mine extra weird to the point where, you know, I've had teachers like, you're not supposed to hold it like that. Who cares how I hold it in my writing? Yeah. Do you, Are you an extra weird pencil holder?

KAYLA: Oh, yes. Yeah, I am. Yeah. Actually, let's see. So I hold mine. Yeah, I just kind of like balance it but have like an extra point.

ADRIANA: Oh, nice, nice. And do you have like an extra callus. Yes. Yeah, the callus.

KAYLA: And so whenever there were like standardized tests, this whole side of my hand would just be.

ADRIANA: Oh, yeah, yeah, the smudge, the smudge. I used to have smudgy paper that I used to like... Under my hand over my notebooks to avoid that. Yeah. I had, for years I had a callus on my, on my left pinky. And it's gone. It's gone now because, I mean, I hardly ever write, but it was, I thought it was never gonna go away. I hold my pencil really funny. I have, I have a banana here that I'm going to use to demonstrate because my, my pens are like far away, but I, I hold. Oops. This is how I hold my pencil is like this. So yeah. Teachers would be like, what the hell, you can't hold it like that. I'm like, watch me, So anyway, well, thank you. Always fun to meet another lefty. Now do you prefer iPhone or Android?

KAYLA: iPhone. Yeah. I grew up using Mac products so I feel like it was just kind of a natural evolution.

ADRIANA: That's so cool that you grew up like that. I did not grow up using Mac products, but I became like a late stage convert.

KAYLA: My parents were both teachers and the school district that they work for got a huge grant from Apple and so they actually got to like take an early computer home.

ADRIANA: Oh my God.

KAYLA: In the summertime. Yeah. So like when it wasn't being used, which was great. So yeah. So back in the like green and black little boxy Mac days.

ADRIANA: I remember those. Yeah. I remember growing up like schools always had the Macs and it was like the, it was the Apple IIe before...pre Mac. And then, and then in my high school they had a, they had a Macintosh lab for like all the graphic design and then for like the computer class we had like a lab of Unisys Icon computers which I don't even know if they make those anymore but they, they ran Windows and yeah, that, that's what we use for computer programming.

KAYLA: Nice, nice.

ADRIANA: That's cool. Now did you get into computers because of your parents bringing home the max in the summer or was that like a later enlightening?

KAYLA: Yeah, that's a good question. I think that that got me curious in them and like I liked, I was like early on the IT person for my family. So it was like learning, learning how to do those things. I had a great computer computers teacher to, in elementary school but I kind of drifted away from it in junior high and high school and was using more like using computers for like creative things like you know, Photoshop or like film editing. But ended up, yeah, circling, circling back much later because I, I was charged at one point with creating like Internet based documentary extras, like different things that you could use to interact with media and archives. And there was so much that I was always just asking this other engineer to do that it got me somewhat curious of like, I wonder if I could do this myself someday. And it wasn't until you know, I was kind of at this point where I was wrapping up a film project that I had been working on for a few years and wasn't sure if I wanted to go looking for a new one or make a career change that a friend of mine who was a software engineer encouraged me to look into that. And so that's kind of how I got into coding and started learning about it and enjoying it.

ADRIANA: That's so cool. So your original background was more on the film end of things?

KAYLA: Yep. Yeah, yeah. Documentary film stuff.

ADRIANA: Oh, wow, that's so cool. I. I have to say, like, you know, having. Not that I'm a great editor or anything, but, like, editing video was something that terrified me, like, even 10 years ago, and now I'm like, okay at it. And I have mad respect for. For people who do video editing, because that is. That's a lot more work than just photo editing. Like, so much work.

ADRIANA: So much work, so.

KAYLA: Oh, yes. Yeah. Such a skill.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

KAYLA: And it's amazing how you can take the same footage and just edit it in different ways and have completely different films, completely different feelings.

ADRIANA: Oh, yeah, that's true. It's all about, like, the context, right?

KAYLA: Yeah.

ADRIANA: Cool. That's awesome. All right, next question. I think you've answered it already, but do you prefer Mac, Linux, or Windows?

KAYLA: Oh, yes. Yeah. So I would say, yeah, Mac is definitely where I feel most at home. I think Linux is really interesting, but I haven't had a chance to play around with it. And every time I'm using a Windows computer, it feels like I'm being forced to use my right hand. Like, I just. I can get to it eventually, but it just doesn't click in the same way.

ADRIANA: Oh, my God, I love that.

KAYLA: Last night, I was actually helping my aunt with her laptop, and she wanted to bookmark some websites and things like that, and it just. It took me like, an extra 30 seconds every time to be like, nope, this is where you click on this mouse and. Yeah. How you. How you right click and...

ADRIANA: It's true. It's true. One thing I have to give credit to the Apple folks, like, when I switched from Windows to Mac, is I was surprised by how intuitive the shortcuts were because I'm a huge shortcut person. And I found that I discovered a lot of shortcuts by accident just through, like, I don't know, I'm like, what happens if I do this? And lo and behold, I'm like, what? It does that. Yeah. So mad props on the usability. That's one thing that I really appreciate about Macs, that I don't see that in Windows land yet.

KAYLA: Yeah. One of the things that I like to do as a kid was see how far I could get with using just the commands on the Mac. Only use no mouse. Because Macs didn't really have a lot of games at that point in time, so it was like games to play. But you could get, you could get pretty far with just a keyboard.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah. It's actually really impressive. Cool. Okay, next question. What is your favorite programming language?

KAYLA: My favorite programming language is Ruby. Yeah, I, you know, I, it's funny. So I started learning JavaScript first and that, you know, felt it felt more like code like because you had all of these extra characters, you have these curly braces and lots of quotes and things like that. Yeah, yeah. And then I went to a coding boot camp that started, started us out with Ruby. And at first I like remember telling my partner like, man, this programming language sucks. Like it's just like I'm writing words, it doesn't feel like there's any code in there at all. But then as time went on I was like this, this feels quite nice to just think about almost like writing a sentence or how you would explain something to another person, like making the code seem very like story based.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

KAYLA: And you know, I was fortunate that after my coding boot camp I ended up working for a company that specialized in Ruby, Rails and React, which was exactly what I studied. And I've just kept landing myself in these roles so I get a chance to dabble now and then in other languages, but I don't feel nearly as comfortable as I do in Ruby.

ADRIANA: Cool. That's so awesome. And you know, it's funny because there's, I feel like there's always a place for Ruby no matter what. Like there's such a demand for Ruby developers. It's such a, like alive and well community. And you know, I've also mentioned this a bunch of times on the show. I've had a lot of Ruby people come on and the, the common element is, you know, like they love the language so much and it's like such a, everyone talks about the community around it as well that they really love. So.

KAYLA: Yes.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, that's so great. I've never touched Ruby. I've read Ruby code a couple of times because of a previous job and I have to say I, I'm like, yeah, I can tell what's going on from reading this. So mad props to Ruby.

KAYLA: Yeah. Yes. Oh yeah. I love the community part of it too. Like I think that that made you know, career changing and learning a new language like feel so much more accessible and just like going to a conference that feels like every person you bump into is like extremely friendly and like wants to know who you are as a person and ask good questions. So it feels comfortable.

ADRIANA: That's so great. I, I love that. And you know, I think half, half of what we, you know, half of what being soft a software engineer is about is the community or even in tech in general. It's all about the community, finding the place where you belong, finding your people, basically. And it's nice that I think, like, you can pretty much find your people in any, like, little technique, which is amazing. Awesome. All right, here's. Here's one that may.

ADRIANA: May be controversial, maybe not. Do you prefer Dev or Ops?

KAYLA: I think, I think Dev. I want to feel more comfortable with Ops, but every time. Like it. Yeah, it just feels a little foreign. I find myself often needing to relearn things, but I've. I've recently been working on a project that's had me get to spend more time in Ops and now I'm feeling a little more comfortable in it again. So that's exciting.

ADRIANA: That's exciting. Awesome. Next question. Do you prefer JSON or YAML?

KAYLA: Ooh, that's really hard. I guess, I guess YAML because I find that I have fewer compiling issues when I'm working with YAML. I'll forget a comma or add a comma somewhere with JSON that I'm not supposed to.

ADRIANA: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. My, my, my issue with JSON is like all the curly braces and all the quotes everywhere. Because, like, I mean, YAML is like very loosey goosey on the quotes. Like you do or you don't. JSON. I hate that, like the keys have to be in quotes and the values have to be in quotes.

KAYLA: Yeah.

ADRIANA: I mean, if it's a string, where...does it also. If it's a number. I can't remember now.

KAYLA: I don't think so. I think numbers can be just themselves.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah. But yeah, it's like too many quotes, too many curly braces. It makes my brain want to go.

KAYLA: Right. I'm just trying to like sift through them.

ADRIANA: Let me read it. I can't read it.

KAYLA: Yeah, exactly.

ADRIANA: Yeah. Awesome. Next one. Do you prefer spaces or tabs?

KAYLA: I guess I like, I like the look of a double. Of a double space. But I don't use my space bar to create that. I always use the tab key, so I don't know what that means.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you can configure VSCode to like when you hit tab, it just makes it as a space instead of a tab.

KAYLA: Yep.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I, yeah, I'm with you. I will never use the space bar to like tab my stuff. But I will use tab to create spaces.

KAYLA: Yes, yes.

ADRIANA: Cool. Do you prefer to consume content through video or text?

KAYLA: Hmm, I think it depends on what it is. Like if I am trying to like learn a new high level concept, I prefer, I mean really almost like audio more than video. Just being able to hear someone explain it to me. But if I'm trying to do like a, like a code along or like solve a specific problem, then I prefer text.

ADRIANA: Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, I, I'm with you on that. A few, it's funny, a few people have also mentioned like just the audio aspect, which, you know, like I've mentioned many times on this show. I'm not much of a video person, but I will put on like a YouTube video while I'm doing chores and just listen to the audio because it feels very podcasty to me. Like I'll even like, lately I've been just comfort watching Star Trek the Next Generation and I'll just like, I'll just like do whatever, like be brushing my teeth and listening to an episode while I'm, you know, while I'm listening, I'm not even watching the video.

KAYLA: That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah, I love to just have some sort of audio content when I'm, when I'm walking my dog and occasionally like if I'm stuck on something or just also like need to take a coding break if I want to feel like I'm still working, I'll listen to something tech related.

ADRIANA: Yes, yes, exactly. That's awesome. Okay, final question. What is your superpower?

KAYLA: Well, I've had, I've had people tell me that I can be really helpful with docs and you know, like make...rewrite things or reword things in, in like READMEs or change logs or something to, to make them more clear. So maybe, maybe that's my superpower.

ADRIANA: That is a great superpower. There is something to be said about effective communication, so I am down for it. Awesome.

KAYLA: I blame it entirely on this experiment they had us do in junior high where we had to write out the steps to make a peanut butter sandwich. I don't know if you've heard of this or have had to do it, but. And in class you'd bring your instructions and the teacher would then try to make a peanut butter sandwich, literally following your instructions. So if you didn't say to open the jar, they would slam the knife through the top of the jar and say, nope, not going to be a peanut butter sandwich.

ADRIANA: Oh my God, that is such a great exercise. And that is such a great way to ingrain that in you. Because I. A personal pet peeve of mine when it comes to documentation for software or. Yeah, yeah, for, for software development, for like learning a new tool or whatever is like the skipped steps. Please include the steps. We don't all know what you're talking about because we're not as smart as you. So please dumb it down for the rest of us peasants.

KAYLA: Yes. Because I think, I don't think I've ever come across a situation where I've been like, oh, I wish you were less specific. Right. Because even if you know the details, you can just skim and keep scrolling. But yeah, yeah, yeah. Not skipping steps is, I think, a true sign of great documentation.

ADRIANA: Yes, exactly. Exactly. And I love...the peanut butter sandwich exercises is a really good one. And I feel like more schools should be doing stuff. Stuff like that.

KAYLA: Yeah, yeah. And I mean, you know, maybe try it yourself if you want to practice. Practice with docs or something. See how far you get.

ADRIANA: That's a great idea. And, and actually even. Yeah. On, on a similar vein, not, not just trying the. I'm assuming you were referring to like specifically trying the peanut butter sandwich example, but like also making sure that like when you're writing your own docs, that you can follow your own instructions. Right?

KAYLA: Yes, yeah. Checking. Checking it back afterwards and going step by step.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because that says a lot too. Like, especially like when I put out a tutorial or whatever and I want to. I'm like extra paranoid. So I want to make sure that it's like very reproducible. So I've taken to using GitHub Codespaces a lot to be able to reproduce things. And that has helped me so much because it's like a very, like, from scratch environment. So, you know, I haven't. It's not polluted with the other crap that I already have installed. And so it's, it's really great to vet whether or not like, you know, I'll. Whether or not my instructions are they work because of the stuff that I already had installed or do they work because they're actually correct?

KAYLA: Yeah. Oh, that's a great point. I really haven't experimented much with GitHub Codespaces, but I know the OpenTelemetry Ruby repo has them set up. So maybe, maybe this is now the time to start playing around with that.

ADRIANA: Yeah, that's awesome. And you know, you've. You've done the perfect segue into like our main topic of conversation because you are, I hope I get this correct. Are you one of the approvers or maintainers of OpenTelemetry Ruby?

KAYLA: So I'm both. So on the OpenTelemetry Ruby repo, the one that holds the SDK and the APIs and such, I'm an approver. And then on the OpenTelemetry Ruby contrib repo, I'm a maintainer.

ADRIANA: Oh, that's awesome. So tell us how you got to, you got into like this whole OpenTelemetry journey like from. Because it's, it's such a, I think it's such an honor and also an accomplishment to you know, become a, become, become an approver, become a maintainer of an open source repo. Especially a project like OpenTelemetry, which for those who are unfamiliar with it, it's the second most contributed open source project of the CNCF. So.

KAYLA: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think I've always been intrigued by the idea of open source. Like I, you know, kind of, when we were talking about the documentary path earlier, I think I was kind of in this like, you know, grassroots vein, like wanting to be a part of community driven things. And I kind of saw that in open source. So that, that felt intriguing to me. And the team that I work on for my day job is New Relics Ruby Agent, which is open source. So there, you know, I'm responsible for maintaining the New Relic RPM Gem along with some other fantastic people. And we will get, we have our, you know, repo on GitHub and will receive issues and pull requests and things like that. But you know, New Relic, like other Observability vendors have noticed that OpenTelemetry is becoming a really important part of the Observability ecosystem and has the power to disrupt, you know, tools like New Relic RPM that have existed for, gosh, I don't even know how long, over 15 years now I think. And so I was tasked with just checking out what the OpenTelemetry Ruby project was like and seeing how it compared with our agent. And so from there, you know, it was initially just kind of comparing code and seeing how that went. But as time went on I also kind of started comparing communities and seeing how there were so many more people contributing to this project and such, like diverse engineers from, you know, people who maybe had Observability experience or people who did not and you know, getting feedback from people who were using the Gem about things that, you know, if you captured a span in this way, we would find it much more meaningful than in the other way. And that kind of feedback I felt like was sorely lacking from the New Relic repo. We will get bug reports, occasionally we'll get feature requests, but they're few and far between. After doing this analysis and seeing that the OpenTelemetry Ruby project was missing two of the major signals, logs and metrics, chatted with my managers and was able to get some time to start working on the OpenTelemetry Ruby project. I had just done some logs work for New Relics to do automatic log forwarding and decided to start there with OTel for Ruby and have just kind of attended the SIGs and submitted PRs and collaborated ever since. I guess that was actually almost a year ago. So.

ADRIANA: Yeah, that's so cool. Wow, that's awesome. So it was, you know, like you're, it's something that you, you noticed there was this gap and so you, you went to your manager to like ask to fill the gap. That's so great. And you know, how, how, how was it like the initial experience of contributing to the SIG and contributing like your first code, like your first PR?

KAYLA: Yeah, it was educational for sure. I, the first PR that I opened, well, this is not the first PR. At first I opened a docs PR. You know, I was going through some steps and I noticed that something was wrong or didn't work for me and kind of submitted something there. But I'd say the first like major piece of code change was I found an issue where OpenTelemetry had essentially copied New Relic's SQL obfuscation tool and integrated it into their repository. And there was some code duplication amongst the MySQL related Gems and the Postgres Gems. And the ticket was asking to create some type of helper that could be used across all of these Gems. So I was like, easy, great, I will just move this code to a new spot.

Don't even need to really refactor it because it seems identical. Let's just do that. So I did that, submitted my PR, thought everything was looking good and just kind of kept learning about the project as time went on. Whereas New Relic RPM puts everything into one Gem. OpenTelemetry Ruby is extremely modular and every little part is its own Gem. And I don't think Gems are libraries for Ruby that you install. The first move was I put it in this general base Gem, but instead we decided that a new helper Gem would be better for this MySQL work. Then as time went on, this code hasn't been looked at for a while.

Maybe we want to refactor something here or we want something to work better. I think a big lesson learned for me was that instead of encouraging that work to be done in a different PR and maybe creating a separate issue to come back to it later, I kept accepting those recommendations and incorporating them PR until, you know, every time I accepted one of those things, that meant it needed to get reviewed by more people and have more discussion and feedback before going forward. Because it's also, you know, even though it is. Was intended to be just kind of a code relocation, like it was starting to take on a bigger change. And this code is very important to the database instrumentation, to all of the database instrumentation. So we wanted to be really careful about not breaking things for existing users. So. Yeah, so I don't, I don't remember how long it was, but it was, it was quite a few months before that PR actually got moved in, merged in.

I think we had well over 100 comments. But I think it did a great job of teaching me, you know, OpenTelemetry for Ruby standards for code, things that they like to test that are different from the way that New Relic likes to test things and also the way that, you know, they like to organize things and having the opportunity to take code that I was already familiar with and, you know, bring it to life more in an OpenTelemetry vein, I think kind of got me, got me hooked in terms of. Yeah. Trying to see things in this, in this new OpenTelemetry light.

ADRIANA: That's awesome. That's so exciting too. And it's such a great way to, you know, to get your hands dirty is like, take something familiar. But, you know, you make such an excellent point too of like, letting the PR get too big. Because I almost got caught by this this week where I submitted a PR to the docs to include like, some like, troubleshooting tips for the Target Allocator. And I got emboldened and I'm like, you know what I have, I. Not only am I contributing, like, you know, troubleshooting tips for that, I'm also going to include troubleshooting tips for auto instrumentation for the OTel Operator in the same PR. And Severin, who's one of the maintainers of the docs, he's like, yeah, you should, if you don't mind, could you open a second PR for that? And I'm so grateful that he nudged me in that direction because I'm like, yeah, otherwise that first PR would have just. It would, would have just taken forever to get it merged kind of thing. So things like that like, I. I appreciate when, you know, if you have somebody who, who will nudge you or, or you learn on your own that, like, yeah, maybe, maybe I should split this up. There's definitely something to be said for, for putting. Putting an issue to bed, getting some closure, getting that. That feature incorporated as quickly as possible, as safely as possible as well. That's so great. That's so great.

And how did you, like, what was the path for you from, you know, just like, initial contributor to like, maintainer or I guess contributor, approver or maintainer. Like, how. How does. What's that path look like?

KAYLA: Yeah, so for me, you know, I started. I started attending the SIGs after this database PR, but also kind of like in conjunction with it. I made it clear that I wanted to contribute logs. I wanted to get as far as I could in contributing the log signal that I had the time and the resources and so started writing that and contributing a lot of code in that way. And also just paying attention to what was happening in the repo when even, like, smaller maintenance things were needed. So, like, if dependabot opened a new PR in contrib, like, trying to read it and approve it, even though I didn't have an official green checkmark, like, being able to just become more visible and, you know, hope that I could become a more trusted set of eyes through doing that.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

KAYLA: And the Ruby. The Ruby SIG is pretty small. I think that, you know, it. There are a lot of people who have been super committed to the project and really crucial with it, but I don't think they have the same time to commit that they used to have and so kind of trying to learn from them and help them out as well. So I think that helped build trust over time. And I let them know that I was interested in, you know, gaining, getting more responsibility and going through that path. And so, yeah, I worked with them to make it. Make it there.

ADRIANA: That's awesome. And, you know, I think you touch on a really important point, which is advocating for yourself because sometimes we're too shy and we just hope that someone will notice and maybe someone will notice and you'll. You'll get attention that way. But, like, chances are, like, they're too busy in their own world doing whatever, so if you don't stand up for yourself, you're not gonna. You're definitely not gonna get it. So, you know, kudos to you for doing that. I think that's so amazing.

KAYLA: Thank you. Yeah, I. It took a lot of encouragement. I think OpenTelemetry has been a great opportunity for me to practice advocating for myself, because that's something that's really hard for me to do. And I think, you know, anytime you join a new group or a community, especially one that feels like it's already established, it's kind of. I feel like I want to understand how people like to communicate with each other and what is expected. And, you know, I felt pretty strong when I joined that I wanted to, you know, try to gain more responsibility as an approver or a maintainer, but, you know, didn't want to just say, oh, I'm showing up because this is what. This is what I want.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

KAYLA: And. Yeah. And so, you know, I had a lot of support from other folks inside New Relic who have worked with OpenTelemetry, kind of encouraging and coaching me in ways to advocate for myself. But I'm feeling. Yeah, I'm feeling much more confident in it now. And I'm grateful that OpenTelemetry has given me that opportunity to kind of learn this lesson.

ADRIANA: And it's probably one of the best communities to do that, because I've always said so many times, OpenTelemetry is such an incredibly welcoming community, and I've not yet encountered a situation where someone has made some sort of asshole comment on a PR. Like, everything is very thoughtfully worded because at the end of the day, they want your contribution. I mean, this open source is here because of people like us who are. Who are out there contributing. So you don't want to antagonize or alienate the contributors.

KAYLA: Yes, definitely. And that's been a place where I feel like I've gotten a chance to grow as well, because I think with the New Relic repo, like, our team really wants to cater to customers and make sure that they feel seen and heard and that the product is working for them. Like, if you reach out to us, like, we really want to acknowledge that. And in OpenTelemetry, I think that energy is there too. But I also think that because there are so many different voices and perspectives that are coming into it, kind of the ideas about where the project should be and where it should go are different. So there's, I think, a lot more scrutiny about, like, is this the best way to add to this project? Is this something that we, like, want to take on maintaining or that we can, you know, trust will continue to be supported and. Yeah, so getting. Getting those more. Getting some PRs that fall into that gray area of whether, or not, you know, it's the right solution has been challenging because I really want to encourage more people to contribute, but at the same time, we need the right kinds of contributions. So coaching people in a new way or encouraging people to do something differently and figuring out how to say those things has been kind of a challenge for me.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it's funny too, like, contribution, there's like, I guess a couple of different types of contributions because there's the, oh, I see a gap here and I want to fill it. And then there's the. Also, like, you can go through the list of open issues and see if that's something that you would want to take on. And especially believe there's like the great first issue or good first issue label on. On certain issues, which is designed for, you know, people who are new to contributing, as this is like the starter issue that you might want to take on. And it's all about, like, there's no issue. There's no such thing as a small issue to tackle because everything, every little thing, helps to contribute to the community.

KAYLA: Yes. Yeah. It's hard to tell the impact of the change that you make. Even if it's like a single line change, you know, if you're bringing, maybe just changing a key so that it matches a new semantic convention, I mean, that can still have a huge impact as time goes on. Or like one of our good first issues I think we have labeled right now is adding. Adding a spell checker that's used in the opentelemetry.io website on the Ruby repositories. And you know, that, that could make a big difference because, you know, we don't really know how we're spelling things wrong or if we're not matching the style guide in places. And having that consistency, I think just makes for an easier experience. Whereas sometimes if you're reading something and it's misspelled, it can just be a bit of a. A hard stop.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, because then your brain can tend to be very judgy. Oh, they can't spell this. Why should I trust these docs?

KAYLA: Yes.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it's, it's interesting you mentioned the, the spell checker and the. Just like maintaining the style guide. Because that, that is definitely one thing. Like having made a bunch of docs contributions in the last couple years, like, they are very stringent on that. And even though it may drive you a little bit crazy as you're like trying to get like all those checks to pass as you're after you push your code for the PR, there is a method to the madness because it really does allow for like a more streamlined experience because everyone has a different way of coding. Everyone has a way of, different way of documenting and it is absolutely annoying to go through like inconsistent, inconsistent code. It just...eugh! So...that people put those checks and balances in place.

There's, there's a reason for it even, even if I might seem a little bit annoying or inconvenient, like it'll save you that extra bit of, of stress in the end. Right?

KAYLA: Definitely.

ADRIANA: Awesome. Another thing that I wanted to switch gears on a little bit is you know, just get your thoughts around like open source communities in general. Like when we were chatting before we started the recording, talking about like these more community sponsored open source projects versus ones that are more like corporate sponsored or like one, you know, primarily one company kind of overseeing the open source project. If you have any thoughts on that.

KAYLA: Yeah, I think, I think my experience like working on these two different projects has been really interesting or types of projects in like the vendor controlled land. There's a level of like wanting the community and I think almost assuming that if you make something open source the community will show up and maybe they will write the code for you. And I think that a lot of places that have open sourced products with that like hope or intention in mind have possibly been let down. I think. I'm not sure if it's because of the way that companies have support that works differently, usually an internal support team or if it's, you know, as a business having stakeholders and a structure that's more corporate and like business driven, that there's maybe less space for creativity outside of the specific goals of the organization. I also wonder too if in the vendor controlled space like you as a customer possibly feels different when you're looking at the code versus a fully like, I guess like maybe like company agnostic open source project because I think as a customer I would be more interested in trying to just get something fixed. Whereas maybe in like a more general open source environment I would feel more empowered to pitch an idea. I don't know if that's true, but that's my hunch.

Yeah, that's one thing that I really, really love about OpenTelemetry is that the vendors and the end users are working together. And I think that there is no single company or organization that is, or I guess I should say company that's responsible for it because the CNCF is the organization responsible for it. It keeps things yeah, more, more creative, more, more volatile. But I think also will, will drive something that might be more More valuable overall.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I totally agree. And I think OpenTelemetry spends a lot of effort in trying to keep things as vendor neutral as possible. And I say that in the best way possible because really, you know, like one of, for those who aren't aware, you know, I work with Reece Lee, who from New Relic, one of your, one of your co workers, on the OTel End User SIG. And we work for competitors, but like, I don't see it that way. That's maybe what it looks like on the outside, but I don't see it that way. We're all friends in OpenTelemetry, regardless of vendor. Like, we, we don't see each other's competitors. We're all like working towards the same goal.

We all want the same things and we are trying to cater to like, our user base as much as possible. Like, we want something put out that's useful to the people consuming it. So, you know, we don't want to be about it. But also being strict in, in terms of like making sure that not, you know, we're not favoring a vendor over another. And if there's pushback around that, it's for a very like, valid reason because we really don't want it to be like one vendor standing out over the other. We're all friends.

KAYLA: Yes. Yeah, yeah. As you were saying that, I was kind of reminded of the piece of advice that's given that's like always like, don't be afraid to ask a question because someone else in the room may have the same question as you. I think that is really true in OpenTelemetry because often if one user or one vendor runs into a certain problem, it may be something that other people are struggling with as well. And so that contribution in OpenTelemetry is like a tide that raises all boats. I think that's how you say that.

ADRIANA: Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree. And you remind me of something that happened to me last week where I was like, I was stuck on this one issue and it was related to the OTel operator and I like popped into the Slack and before I started I was going to ask my question. I'm like, what if I search on this particular keyword to see if someone else has had that issue? And lo and behold, that is exactly what happened. So remembering that oftentimes your issue is not unique. And as you said, having the courage to ask that question benefits not only you, but others who are probably in the dark about that as well. Well, that's so great. We are coming up on time.

So before we go, I was wondering if you had any hot takes or words of wisdom for our audience.

KAYLA: Yeah, let's see. So, I mean, I guess maybe just from our conversation, I think. Yeah. Two big things that I would say if you're participating in any open source project, not just OpenTelemetry, is don't be afraid to ask questions, especially asking questions of the maintainers. I think maintainers are hungry to have people contribute and participate. And the other one would be, you know, even. Even though you may want to participate in some sort of group, like, don't. Don't lose sight of. Of who you are either and what your coding standards are either. I think bringing. Bringing your full self there and being able to ask questions and make statements from what you've learned to be best can usually create a really fruitful discussion so that either you learn something from someone else or perhaps they learn something from you.

ADRIANA: I love that so much. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, really being, like, not being shy about, like, don't under. Don't underestimate, like, how capable you are is really like. Yeah, it's such an important. Such an important thing to bring, I think, to. To any table. Well, thank you so much, Kayla, for. For Geeking Out with me today, y'all. Don't forget to subscribe and be sure to check out the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media. Until next time...

KAYLA: Peace out and geek out.

ADRIANA: Geeking Out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Villela. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking Out is also produced by my daughter, Hannah Maxwell, who incidentally designed all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the socials by going to bento.me/geekingout.

The One Where We Geek Out on Java with Ix-chel Ruiz of Karakun

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Adriana Villela, Hannah Maxwell, Ix-chel Ruiz) — Tue, 3 Dec 2024 05:00:00 +0000

About our guest:

Ix-chel Ruiz has been developing software applications and tools since 2000. Her technical research interests include server side languages like Java, dynamic languages, client-side technologies, testing, automation and observability. Her humanities research interests include personal, professional and organisational development and transformation. Java Champion, Oracle ACE pro, Testcontainers Community Champion, CDF Ambassador, Hackergarten enthusiast, Open Source advocate, public speaker and mentor.

Find our guest on:

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show notes:

Additional notes:

Ix-chel's upcoming conferences/un-conferences: JNation, MAD Summit, DevBcn, JCrete

Transcript:
ADRIANA: Hey, fellow geeks. Welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And geeking out with me today, I have Ix-chel Ruiz. Welcome, Ix-chel!

IX-CHEL: Thank you for having me. Thank you.

ADRIANA: I'm very excited to have you on and tell folks where you're calling from and where you work.

IX-CHEL: Okay, so I'm calling from Basel, Switzerland, and I work in Karakun. We are small consultancy company here in Switzerland and we also have offices in Germany and India, in several other places around the world. But we're still very, very small. And I still love that.

ADRIANA: That's awesome. Yeah, I love small consulting companies because I feel like the projects are a lot more interesting that way too.

IX-CHEL: Yes. It allows a closer relationship with the people that you work with, the teams that you work, and your clients. So it's. You are there to help them figure out something. And sometimes it's. It's actually systems and sometimes it's a totally different thing.

ADRIANA: It's so true. That's so true. I. So I did consulting early in my career, but I worked at Accenture for four years, so I feel like. So I have the, like the big corporate consulting experience, which was. It was very interesting. It was very challenging. It led to early burnout. But I. I do admire, like, the smaller consultancies and I have a couple of friends who work at smaller consultancies and. And they quite like it. So.

IX-CHEL: I joined that club.

ADRIANA: Awesome. Awesome. Well, before we get started with the meaty bits, I'm going to get you started with some lightning round questions. Lightning round slash icebreaker. We'll see how if they go fast or slow. It's all good either way. Okay, first question. Are you a lefty or a righty?

IX-CHEL: I use both.

ADRIANA: That's awesome. I love that. Okay, do you prefer iPhone or Android?

IX-CHEL: I have to say that I have an iPhone. And at the beginning I had Dell machines, but then at work several years ago, they gave me a Mac and from there on, like, having Mac devices made life easier because everything was synchronized. So now I have four of my own devices. Apple

ADRIANA: Oh, you just answered my next question. If it was Mac, Linux or Windows. That's awesome. Yeah, it's funny you mentioned that because I think, like, when I got my first iPhone, I was still on a Windows machine and I'm like, oh, my God, what is this nightmarish crap? And then, and then I got like an Apple. Like, I got a Mac with my iPhone and I already had an iPhone. I'm like, magic.

IX-CHEL: Yes. Easy to use. Compatibility, consistency goes along the, like, a long way.

ADRIANA: I completely agree. Yeah, I mean, that, that, that's why I'm part of the Mac cult. I like that everything plays nice together.

IX-CHEL: Exactly.

ADRIANA: Awesome. What is your favorite programming language?

IX-CHEL: Java. I have to say Java, but in between. I mean, at this moment in time, you cannot say that you only love one language because you end up using a lot. So you're a polyglot by almost by definition. So I love Java, but I also like other languages. My second great love is Groovy because at that time, yes, at that time it gave me everything, like, less ceremony, more the dynamic part. So it was. And you could create magic in so little lines of code. So, yes. So Java, Groovy. I also have done a little bit of Go and many of JavaScript, obviously. Obviously. Full Stack developer.

ADRIANA: That's cool. You know, I think you're the first person I've met who's liked Groovy. And, you know, I messed around with Groovy for a bit as well. Like when I first started getting into Jenkins and I wanted to do some more customization stuff. And I remember, like, other people dissing Groovy, but I'm like, but this is like less verbose Java because I was a Java developer for like 15 years and I'm like, this is less verbose Java. This is like super freaking cool. And I'm like, why are people, like, harping on Groovy?

IX-CHEL: No, no, I mean, honestly, I remember. I remember my first session, it was in one Java one. And then this. The speaker was showing how to, for example, open Excel and do crazy stuff all programmatically, all from the Groovy console. And it was so easy. And I was like, oh, my God, I need that. I mean, because I'm coming from the, from the Ubuntu, like, shell and the command line interface, it's my life. So suddenly, like command line interface, but for applications that usually you're like, oh, my God, how many clicks do I have to do here to make things work? So suddenly, no clicks involved, and you were doing something incredible, and I fell in love. The funny part of that story is that my husband entered Groovy first and he was like, I have been trying to convince you of try Groovy. And you got convinced by that speaker and not by me.

ADRIANA: It's always the ones closest to us that we don't want to listen to. It's like, yeah, for sure. They know what they're talking about. That's great. I love that. Oh, yeah, sorry, go ahead.

IX-CHEL: Sorry. It's because. It's because we got into this. I'm hosting one of the core contributors of Groovy in the Basal JUG next month is Jochen Theodorou. He is part of the PMC of Groovy. He has been working on the internals on the compiler. I mean, I still very close to Groovy in my heart and with the people that I work with.

ADRIANA: Oh, that's so awesome. That's so great. Yeah, it's funny because you don't hear too much about Groovy, and I'm very. I'm very pleased to hear that there. It's still like a very thriving community.

IX-CHEL: Yes.

ADRIANA: Awesome. All right, next question. Do you prefer Dev or Ops?

IX-CHEL: Okay. As I told you, I started with Ubuntu when I was in high school. Like, honestly, I received. I actually was not Ubuntu. Ubuntu was very sophisticated years later. I started with the distribution in a CD-ROM, when you had to go to university to have people. And that time it was the. The university, the main university of Mexico, and they will burn you a CD-ROM and give it to you. That's how you distributed Linux at that time. So I hear. I'm dating myself.

ADRIANA: Like, oh, my God. Yes, yes, yes.

IX-CHEL: I totally.

ADRIANA: Yes, I'm with you there. CD-ROM days.

IX-CHEL: Oh, my God. So CLI, Ops and making to everything, Automate and scripts and everything. That's where I started. That's what pulled me into computers. But then I'm a developer, so you're asking me. For me, there is no separation because probably that's because of my background. So I cannot answer that question. Honestly.

ADRIANA: You know what? I love your answer. And it's funny because I was having a similar discussion with people on this because I like, for me, the thing that attracted me to, like, the whole DevOps movement was the, like, oh, my God, I can use, Like, I like the hardware aspect of it. Like, I like infrastructure, it's cool. But I like coding. And I'm like, oh, you're telling me now I can, like, merge both of them. And the other aspect of it too is, like, as a software engineer, I think, like, for me personally, I think it's shocking when, like, you ask, you ask other software engineers, like, how to build, like, a Docker image of their code, and they're like, I don't know. That's what the DevOps engineer does. And I'm like, In my mind, I find that confusing because for me, DevOps was always meant to be like, no, we're supposed to know how to do this stuff. And now you're telling me that you're like leaving it to someone else, like you've inserted another layer of person to do a thing for you. And I'm like, shouldn't, shouldn't you be like remotely curious as to like how, how you build like the images you're going to deploy?

IX-CHEL: I'm so with you there and let me paint you this image. And I think you are going to be a little bit scared, as I did when somebody make me realize that. He said, have you realized that now most of the people interact with their phones, that is their main interaction with a device. And have you realized that they don't even know how to organize or comprehend the concept of directories and files?

ADRIANA: Oh my God, so true.

IX-CHEL: So because I was telling him that I joined into one of these edX courses about data because I wanted to learn more about managing data, acquiring data and everything like that. And I was, I was complaining a little bit because I told him like the first five sessions it was about how to structure data in directories, like how in the hierarchy. And it was like, do we really need three sessions for this? And when he turns around and he said, like, Ix-chel, do you realize that there is a lot of people, the majority of people that do need this kind of introduction and even more because before we have computers, like most of people had to go to the computers, drag and drop files, create the structure of the directories. And now our main interface is going to be the phone, which doesn't like, obscures all that. So I think we're going getting more tech savvy in some things, but forgetting the fundamentals because they don't realize that there's an operating system, that you need files, that they are organized, that there's a meaning. So it is kind of scary for me.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I completely agree with you. And I experienced this firsthand with my daughter. So my daughter is turning 16 this year. And so first two kind of funny stories. One, so her first, I guess computer was like an iPad or iPhone. And when, when we put her in front of an actual laptop, she started trying to touch the screen and I'm like, oh my God, of course she would. Because like that's, that's her interaction with, with computers. That's, that's what she thinks, how she thinks they work. And then secondly, once she started using a computer more regularly for school like for assignments and stuff. She had no concept of directories as well. And so my husband, who's also in tech, my husband and I had to be like, okay, this is how you organize your documents. This is where you're going to want to put your stuff so that you know, you don't have like your, your stuff for like chemistry in the same place as your stuff for English, for example. And it was just like, for me, like, it. I'm like, oh, of course that wouldn't make sense to her because she's never been exposed to it. But for us, it's like, we grew up with this. Of course it's obvious that you need a directory structure, so. Yeah, it's so wild.

IX-CHEL: Yes, yes. I'm really interested in how we're evolving in that regard.

ADRIANA: Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what other side effects there are going to be. And it's funny because I even find myself like, I'm too lazy sometimes to do stuff on my laptop, which would be like 50 times easier because I'm like, my phone's here with me. I, I don't want to get up and go into the next room, grab my laptop to do whatever. Let's see what I can do on my phone. But then you get my dad who's like, why the hell would you want to do this on your phone? Like, you've got like a perfectly good computer, like it's a bigger screen. And for me I'm like, that's just too inconvenient.

IX-CHEL: I totally understand that one.

ADRIANA: Yeah. Okay, next question. This might be difficult to choose again. Do you prefer JSON or YAML?

IX-CHEL: Okay, well, it's not so difficult because honestly, meaningful indentation. I don't like when it's difficult for people to realize that there is a mistake.

ADRIANA: Yes.

IX-CHEL: I mean, linters and validators are getting better, but it is like setting yourself for failure. And this is something I keep telling people. Like, why do we design either formats, tools that are not helping the users to realize best practices and mistakes easier, or why do you make it so easy for people to fail and miserably fail?

ADRIANA: Yeah, fair enough.

IX-CHEL: So JSON is not the best thing ever either. In the other way, because the format was also very limited, but it allows better this. It doesn't set yourself for failure so easy. Still not the best format either.

ADRIANA: But I, I agree it's more forgiving. YAML. YAML is very unforgiving. I, I like YAML because I think it's cleaner to read. I find there's like too many curly braces in, in JSON, it makes my head go boom. But I, I do agree with you. I think JSON is definitely more forgiving. All right, next question. Do you prefer spaces or tabs.

IX-CHEL: You know, I'm going to tell the story there. I have heard everything under the sun in terms of like, you code like a girl. This formatting, it's so weird. I prefer tabs, I prefer spaces. If you don't put the spaces between parentheses or like. There are several arguments and some of them are really interesting. I, for example, with people with dyslexia space, if you leave a space between the parentheses, it's going to be easier for them because it reads better. Yeah, but then I love the solution of Go and Go. The people that design go, they agree that they will going to disagree on where we're going to be the best practices or so they created the form, you run that formatter and every single piece of code looks exactly the same. There is consistency. So they didn't agree on we should do this or we should do that, but they agree on having consistency. So I'm missing that from other languages. So honestly, at some point we should say I don't care, but let's agree on something even if we agree on disagreeing and then we try to create the least chaos in the world.

ADRIANA: Yeah, and that's a really good point with, with the Go formatting because that, that's definitely one thing that I appreciate. Like I, I did, I spent a few years doing Python and the thing with Python is that I think compared to Java, I feel like there's like so many different ways to format your Python code, irritatingly so, and I'm very particular about how, how I format it but, and, and of course people have their own way of doing it. But then, but then like if, if we both, you know, commit our code into the repo with our different ways of formatting, it's like, you hate how I formatted. I hate, hate how you formatted. So the go away, as you said, is nice because it's like, yeah, do it your way, but when you save the file, it's going to get formatted the way I like it. So.

IX-CHEL: Ha, ha ha. Exactly, exactly. These discussions are meaningless. So, and then you focus on other things and, and actually it helps you because you find partners faster. If everything looks the same, whatever thing that it's different, it will caught your eye and, and sometimes that's exactly what we need when we are reading code. So I, I will answer. I would, I will hope that we have that consistency and even if I hate it, I will still adopt it because. Sake of sanity and consistency.

ADRIANA: Yes, I totally agree. We need, we need more like automatic formatting with Go in other languages. Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay, two more questions left. Do you prefer to consume content through video or text?

IX-CHEL: Depending on the content. But I think I love video. It. It has more, more levels of communication obviously. But sometimes when I really need to focus on the content, then it is better for me audio only.

ADRIANA: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I agree. I, I'll. I've told people this before that like send me a YouTube video. I probably won't watch it, but like I will put it on. Like I'll leave my phone on my table with my AirPods on while I'm like doing errands and I'll listen to the video and then, but then if there's a visual component, be like, crap, where are you? But I, I like it because I can just, you know, do mindless things and listen and be more attentive towards it rather than sitting and watching.

IX-CHEL: Exactly, exactly. Because then you, you can focus. Like honestly focus.

ADRIANA: Exactly. Exactly. Cool. Okay, final question. What is your superpower?

IX-CHEL: Good question. I, I keep telling people that one of my advantages is that I can articulate things in, in a different way. And I always telling people that telling a story is really important. And I think that is something that I appreciate about myself.

ADRIANA: I love it. I love it. Yeah. And I think people, people respond well to stories. It's easier for them to remember the stuff that you're saying when you have a cool story to go with it. Right. Rather than some like blah, blah, blah, blah that no one's gonna.

IX-CHEL: Yeah, I mean, well, I, I like to listen a lot of information. I like to research a lot about human behavior. And for example, that when you tell a story, our brain waves start to synchronize better with the speaker. And we also, because we are kind of guessing what is coming next because we all have this innate idea of what a story looks like. Like the intro, the main part where there is conflict, there may be conflict resolution and then the conclusion. So everybody's have this idea of a story. So they are trying to kind of guess what is happening. So their focus is going to be more into your words. So whatever you are telling them at that moment, it will be well received. Better received that it's only a statement.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, that's such a great point. And I love that so much. And I think, and I think also like it's such a powerful tool. Especially like when you're giving a talk at a conference. Because like, I don't know about you, but like I have, I have difficulty sitting. I don't know how I made it through university. I have difficulty sitting through and like watching, watching people give a talk, unless it's like a fun talk with a fun story and then you're like, oh my God, yes, as you said, it's like, what are they going to say next? Because this is really like, this is really cool. It's flowing in a, in a really like logical way. Right.

IX-CHEL: Oh, in my last conference I was in Codemotion Madrid last week actually. And in many conferences there's. They are adding this kind of like community space and like a kind of a non conference. So in many conferences they're putting like lightning talks. Like you go and write your name and talk about five minutes about any topic and you can prepare your slides or you cannot prepare a slide, whatever. And for the last two conferences I have done it. I have gone and write my name in a lightning talk and the topic that I really. Because now I really think that it's super important for everybody, for everybody is storytelling.

ADRIANA: Yes.

IX-CHEL: And so I go there. I haven't written or put a slide deck because I want it to be spontaneous. I want to. And it's also a way for me to improve because I want to react to the audience. So the last time in Codemotion I had a full room and it was. They received very well my, my session. But honestly, the feedback of the people that were in the lighting talks, it was much, much better. Like people were like, oh my God, Ix-chel, I really, really enjoyed your...So, storytelling. It's, I think the superpower that we all need to, if not master, at least be mindful that it could be ours.

ADRIANA: Yes, I love that. I'm super down for that. All right, well, you survived the lightning round questions.

IX-CHEL: Yay.

ADRIANA: Congrats. So now let's get into the meaty bits. And I think, you know, before, before we started recording, you were telling me that like, you know, you have done various things throughout your career. So first off, like, you know, how, how did you get started in tech? Like, tell me about your tech journey.

IX-CHEL: Well, as I said, I live in Switzerland, but I also mentioned Mexico because I mentioned the university that I went to get my CD with the first versions of Linux. Well, okay, yes. So I'm from Mexico and at that time, and I was still in high school, but in my high school we shared the buildings with the University. And they had this cool, cool computer lab and I wanted to work there, but I'm still a high school student, so I went through a lot of hoops and I ended up, at that time it was Irix machines. Like it was super big machines and it was amazing. So that's what pulled me from a very, very young age into working with Unix at that time.

ADRIANA: Nice.

IX-CHEL: So that's how I landed. And then machines were easy to understand. Easy. According to me at that time it were. They were easy to understand and easy to command, let's put it like that. So. And yeah, from there on I decided computer science as my career. And my love for UNIX and the command line and programming has been there since I was a teenager, really.

ADRIANA: That's awesome. What was your first programming language?

IX-CHEL: It was Pascal. And then. Yes, yes, yes, Pascal. And then I went to C and then C++. And by the time I was, I was about to graduate, like year and a half before my graduation, Java made a splash. So I joined Java very, very early.

ADRIANA: Nice. That's awesome. Yeah, I got into Java just. I think they were doing Java in my university, in my third year of university. So I got into Java around that time and I mean, it was the hot language at the time, right? It was like, oh my God, we must all do Java.

IX-CHEL: Yes. Forget about pointers.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I know, right? I know you do C, programming, then you get into Java, you're like, ah, we friends again.

IX-CHEL: Oh my God.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

IX-CHEL: So that, that's how I started with computers. I fell in love with this big machines that I actually they were used mostly for effects... CGI at that time because they were using Softimage and Maya and things like that. So I wanted, at the beginning it was like, let's go and do a special effects at movies. But later on, like, no, I want to go deep.

ADRIANA: That's so cool. So, so what was your, what was your first job out of school?

IX-CHEL: My first job out of school. Oh my goodness. Actually, it was something more about like we were creating models for. At that time there was a plugin that had photorealistic details and you could create 3D models on that. It didn't. I mean, the technology died. But at that time people wanted to create like kind of avatars in real life, like clippy, but 3D and with the quality of movies.

ADRIANA: For that time it was like I had it. It was like well ahead of its time.

IX-CHEL: Yes, completely. Completely. That was my first job.

ADRIANA: Oh, that's so neat. That's so neat.

IX-CHEL: Yes.

ADRIANA: And, and I, I seem to remember because we're on a couple panels together and you mentioned this earlier as well, that you've, you've, you've done the DevRel thing. You've, you've. And then you've gone back into the software, back into being a software engineer. So I guess the question is, what got you into DevRel and then what made you switch back?

IX-CHEL: Okay, so first part, I was very. I'm an introvert. I'm an introvert that can have this like, this kind of moments of energy that is super extrovert. If you meet me at a conference, I'm talking, I'm doing, I'm with people. You see me after the conference, doesn't want to speak a word like a week. So I'm an introvert most of the time. So my first, as I said, I started with computers very early. They were my passion, but Ix-chel didn't speak. So as with your husband, he's. My husband is also in tech. He's actually also another PMC of the Groovy language. So you can imagine how deep we are.

ADRIANA: That explains his hardcore into Groovy then.

IX-CHEL: Yes. I told you. He was like, he convinced you and I didn't convince you. Remember that story?

ADRIANA: Oh, damn.

IX-CHEL: So we went to JavaOne and I was with him because he was a speaker at that time. And you know, we went to the speaker's dinners and whatnot. And then you could see the light of the eyes of the people. Like, what do I talk to the spouse? Because they didn't know that I was in technology. And literally they know that I was also in technology and I had same background and the same profile as my husband. So whatever. They talk with Andreas, my husband, they could talk to me.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

IX-CHEL: And in one of the meetings, in one of these dinners, I was talking to the organizers of QCon Brazil. Yes. And he, he was sharing his, his own experience that there were not a lot of women when he was at university. And, and he was telling me like, it's because we don't have enough role models. And I also was telling him my own experience because I have a dual degree. I'm computer science, but I'm also electronics and communication. Like hardcore. I decided computers at the end, but I'm still like designing. I could design circuits that could have been my future, but I decided computer, they were cooler. And I was telling him like, at least in computer science I had more women in school and in the electronics and communication, it was like, no, I. We Were only three women.

ADRIANA: Oh, my God.

IX-CHEL: In my entire generation.

ADRIANA: Oh, my God.

IX-CHEL: So I was telling him that I totally understand his, his, his position. And he said, like, you know, we need more women speakers. And I'm telling you, this is like more than 15 years ago. And I was like, yes, you're right. Like, yes, you're right. And once I explain, like, I have the same profile as my husband, I work in the same project we are actually, etc. Etc. And he's like, oh, my goodness. I mean, why don't you start speaking at conferences? I'm like, no, like that. But he got me thinking, like, that's the problem. We don't have enough role models, so somebody has to do it. Like. And at that time I said to myself, you're not so bad at what you do, and this is important for you because I had some really bad experiences when I was in the university and I hate them. I hate them so much. That that was for. For a time, my fuel.

And I said, I don't want any other woman having this insulting experiences. So I want more women so that we are not like the most strange thing in the room. So I told my husband, you know what, I'm going to start. Like, I want to speak at conferences. I want to show that we are good technically, we can do whatever. Like, it doesn't matter, but it's. This is important. So that's how I started to speak at conferences. And then, and then I started doing that a lot, but while still being a consultant. And I thought it was really important. And then I like it. And I travel and I met a lot of people and everything like that. So people were like, you are a DevRel. I'm like, no, I have deadlines, I have clients, I have projects I need to provide. Like, no, this is. This is part of my passion. This is part of what I do in my free time. And sometimes now I negotiate with my companies telling them, please sponsor 20% of my time to do all this stuff.

ADRIANA: That's awesome.

IX-CHEL: But people thought that I was a DevRel. And then one of my friends that I met at. In this kind of conferences or traveling or tours, he. He changed jobs and he literally knocked at my door and he said, Ix-chel, do you want to try being DevRel? And I thought for long because I said, this is my passion. This is 20% of my time, maybe more. This is 20% of my time paid by the company and almost all my free time.

ADRIANA: Yeah, it takes a lot of effort and energy.

IX-CHEL: Yes. So I said, yes, I'm going to do this. But turns out that for me, one really important part is technology for me is a tool, tool to solve problems, a tool to improve human lives. And being a DevRel, it's fantastic because you have all these interactions with people, you get all these feedback from developers, you are creating stories, you are helping people learn new things. But I was still missing this part of this is a tool to help solve problems. So I was missing a lot being a part of a project, like a steady project. I want my teammates to be not for this podcast, not for this MVP or this POC. I want people that we have meetings for six months, for one year where the project is still building, etc. etc. So that's why I decided it is fantastic being at DevRel. It's fantastic. Me being so introvert made it a little bit hard because being on more time than 20% or 60% or whatever, it was very hard on me. I love it. But I said, let's go back to engineering because you want to solve problems and have deadlines. And I was talking to my friends in Codemotion, my dear friends, and I said, you know what, I hate to say, but I was missing deadlines. I work better under pressure.

ADRIANA: That is hardcore.

IX-CHEL: Let's see how long can I sustain that again? Maybe I will go back to DevRel. No, I, I actually don't know. No, no, I, I'm happy doing what I'm doing right now.

ADRIANA: That's awesome. So how, how long were you a DevRel for before you. Two years. Okay, two years. And then you're like, no, I want to code.

IX-CHEL: Well, you know, DevRel means so many different things for so many different companies. And one, like you can see that I'm the person that research a lot for her talks for whatever. So I started interviewing a lot of DevRel. My friends and I, we got like the list of if you're a part of marketing is one way, if you're part of engineering is other way, if you're part of sales is another way. And the objectives and the guidelines and the type of work that you have to do and the priorities are totally different. Yeah, so my, my, my view on that, it's just one perspective from one company, from one department. So I cannot tell you honestly, like is DevRel what I experienced? It was one experience of DevRel with some perspective.

ADRIANA: And that's a really good point because as you said, depending on where DevRel falls in your organization, it's going to be a completely different experience. It depends on your manager and it depends. Some companies, companies are hung up on like you have to produce like this kind of content this many times a month or whatever. And then that can be like really stressful in its own, in its own way. Like for I. I've been lucky in, in my role where like, I don't have those kinds of constraints, which has been very nice. And my DevRel work is mostly aligned to open source and OpenTelemetry. Um, but I mean, I've seen, I've seen the other side of it where, you know, folks are like beholden to like producing content constantly and all this stuff. And it's really hard sometimes to like produce content because you have to sit down and learn the thing. But you can't learn the thing if you're expected to produce content all the time. So I, I have to say, like, I'm grateful for my current experience where, you know, I have, I have enough autonomy to like do things at a, at a reasonable pace, produce things that make my employer happy. But I know, I know it can also be like, so, so different.

IX-CHEL: Exactly, exactly. And the other thing that is important to understand is that producing video, producing audio, producing text requires different abilities and skills. And you have to be resonate with the task at hand. And if it's a task that you enjoy, it's going to be super fast and it's going to be something that makes you feel better. But if they are sometimes pushing you in a certain direction, then it's not so enjoyable. So the problem with DevRel, I think one of the problems with DevRel is that we are trying to apply hard measurements, that we are trying to apply this qualitative ideas into something that. Quantitative ideas into something that is qualitative and that mismatch. It's a little bit complicated sometimes.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I agree. And I think that's what causes a lot of conflict because companies want, they want metrics. How are we doing? How do we know we're successful? And sometimes I think companies will tend to like mishire as well for dev rel because it's like, oh, this person has a huge like social following. Okay, but social following because of what? Right, you know, like, you can't use that as like your only, you know, measurement for hiring, for hiring someone.

IX-CHEL: And, and you can also not measure really easy the impact that you have when you are targeting different audiences. Yes, I think, honestly, I think that the position is really important. I will never say that this is like a costing center because people usually some management managers, and let me tell you that this is what I'm saying. It's not because of my experience at my previous company. No, I lucked out. My boss was the best boss ever. He got it right. He understood. Like, let's talk to the audience, let's talk to the developers. It's not, it's not a sales pitch. You are actually telling them what is the problem. You're telling them what is the solution. And this solution is not your product. It, like, it can be your product, but the solution is this and that. You're explaining the solution. And if your product happens to solve the issue in a more eloquent way or with less impedance or less mismatch or less pain, well, that's an advantage. But you have to provide something to your audience. Either it's a better understanding of the problem, a better understanding of the solution, or just knowledge for them to make the right decisions. So my boss knew all of this, but I also, because I told you, when I joined DevRel, I didn't know what this was about. So I started interviewing all my friends. Like, what do you do? What does your day look like? What is your goal? What makes you happy? What makes you unhappy? What do you call success? What do you call a failure? So I got all these stories about what DevRel meant to them and their companies. So I started having this very distorted picture and I was like, oh my goodness. So it was, it was an interesting experience and I have a lot of a broader perspective on what it does, it means. And so that's why I'm telling you what I think it's wrong between the appreciation of the role, the role in itself, and its actual impact on the, on the community. So. But this is not...talking about my own experience.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's. That's some really good insight. And, and I think you, you've got it spot on. Well, another thing that I wanted to talk about, just switching gears a little bit because in, in our pre chat, you mentioned that you have organized some conferences and unconferences and I. Why don't you, why don't you talk more about that?

IX-CHEL: Well, the one that I'm going to mention is the smallest one, it's Basel one, but I love it because I'm the head of the content committee. So that happens in Basel. And I said it's a small one because we. Last year we have 300 attendees, but we have an amazing speaker lineup. So I was very, very happy about that. The other one that I help organize as part of the program committee, is Javaland, which is one of the largest in the German speaking area.

ADRIANA: Oh, cool.

IX-CHEL: Yes. Yes, that. That is one of my also favorite ones because it used to happen in one amusement park. Now we change it to race car. Yes, very famous. But anyway and probably we in the future we will change again to amusement park. The other conferences that un-conferences that I help organize is for example JCrete. JCrete is one that happens in Crete. So really nice. That is an awesome conference...un-conference. So we call ourselves the disorganizers. And for example we. There has been a sister conferences from un-conferences from this one one at the early in February of this year was, for example JChateau, which happens in France. And you can guess what we do is go to Chateaus, wine tasting, and amazing French cuisine.

ADRIANA: So that sounds amazing.

IX-CHEL: If you are into Java, you want to do un-conferences, go either JCrete, JAlba, JChateau. We will have Jalapeño in Mexico, in the beach, in hotels, all inclusive. So I'm also involved in. In those kind of un-conferences.

ADRIANA: Clearly I'm not going to the fun conferences because these un-conferences sound amazing.

IX-CHEL: They are. Honestly, at this point I prefer. I mean don't get me wrong, I'm in love with JavaOne. I'm in love with BaselOne. I also help or I was in the program committee of Devoxx UK. I have been working in the past in Jfokus, one of the largest in Scandinavia. So I love conferences and there's very special conferences because of how do they create the program, how do they organize the space, the topics, etc, etc. But for me un-conferences are like super special because you don't have speakers, everybody's a speaker and you don't have a program. So we encourage people to share their questions or their knowledge or we try to figure out like these conversations that have created amazing opportunities. There have been completely new companies born, for example from JCrete because it's the magic of the right people at the right moment, in the right environment.

ADRIANA: That's so cool. It's funny you mentioned un-conferences because one of my past guests, Lian Li, she talked about how she started into speaking, got into like public speaking. It was after like attending an un-conference. And she said that I guess her. Her topic got chosen and so that was like her first time getting to. To speak in front of an audience in that way. And she said then it led to other speaking opportunities. So it's so cool to have that sort of like organic, you know, like entry into.

ADRIANA: Into speaking. It's like low pressure but high reward.

IX-CHEL: Yes and honestly the community also helps a lot. For example Javaland it's organized by more than 40 different Java user groups around Germany, Netherlands and Switzerland. And for example the ones in different parts of Germany we have in Javaland attracted that it's the newcomers track where we actually help people to speak for the first time at a conference. So people that have never had a speaking experience, we ask them if they need mentors to develop the content or to develop whatever help they need. We can provide that. For example and in the JUG meetings we also have these sessions for new speakers and it's important because we provide the feedback at two levels. One is in terms of the topic and the other one in terms of how do we help you be more effective as a speaker. The other one that has been interesting because I also part of the Java Champions group and we always talking about how do we help the next generation of speakers how do we help people do this jump? Because technology is interesting but you also need the human factor, somebody that helps you learn and helps you grow.

ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. That's so important. And a question for you on in comparing organizing and un-conference compared to a conference, is it easier to organize an unconference or is it just a different kind of challenge?

IX-CHEL: I mean even organizing conferences is totally different because of culture, because of the size. I for example, I joke with people like, Javaland. Javaland requires meetings from entire days, like eight hours. We sit down in a room and we try to figure out stuff. Yeah but that's one way of organizing. Other conferences like everything is asynchronous. We only meet one time, we have a one hour conversation and that's it. We have a program. So I can tell you that the same thing happens with un-conferences. There was one time in JCrete we were almost 200 people, a little bit above 200. So the logistics of that was a nightmare because you still need to help them with the accommodation help them like figure out all the details like an un-conference of this of JCrete we don't have a sponsorship so everybody almost paid its own way. So there's a lot of questions we try. I mean it's also Crete which is, means that it happens during summer, so we're competing with a lot of tourists to rent cars. We are competing with hotels. So sometimes it's a nightmare. Yeah you can imagine But I think, I think that un-conferences require a little bit more coordination. Coordination doesn't mean more time to organize just more coordination.

ADRIANA: Right? Gotcha. Gotcha. That's awesome. Well, we are coming up on time. I mean, I can keep on talking forever and ever. There's like so many, so many cool topics to dig into, but unfortunately our time is coming to a close. But before we wrap up, is there any piece of advice or hot take you would like to share with our audience?

IX-CHEL: So many. But the first of the first one is learn. Learn something, even if you don't think that you need it. Like, be curious. Go read a page, even random sometimes, like something caughts your eye. Go to the next level. Be curious. You never know when that knowledge is going to be helpful. It usually creates small threads in our brains and you can pull them out later on. And sometimes you realize you know things that you don't realize that you know. And that is amazing feeling. So be curious. Always ask why. Don't be afraid of asking why. Having philosophical questions about everything. Life is philosophy. So curiosity, asking questions. That's my advice.

ADRIANA: Awesome. That is amazing advice. I live by that myself, so. And I can definitely attest that it makes for, you know, magical things come out of being curious and asking why. So definitely great advice to. To end off on. Well, thank you so much, Ix-chel, for geeking out with me today. Y'all don't forget to subscribe and check us out on our socials. You can check out our show notes as well. And until next time...

IX-CHEL: Peace out and geek out.

ADRIANA: Geeking Out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Villella. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking Out is also produced by my daughter, Hannah Maxwell, who incidentally designed all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the socials by going to bento.me/geekingout.

The One Where We Geek Out on All Things DevRel with Abdel Sghiouar of Google Cloud

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Adriana Villela, Hannah Maxwell, Abdel Sghiouar) — Tue, 26 Nov 2024 05:00:00 +0000

About our guest:

Abdel Sghiouar is a senior Cloud Developer Advocate @Google Cloud. A co-host of the Kubernetes Podcast by Google and a CNCF Ambassador. His focused areas are GKE/Kubernetes, Service Mesh, and Serverless. Abdel started his career in data centers and infrastructure in Morocco, where he is originally from, before moving to Google's largest EU data center in Belgium. Then in Sweden, he joined Google Cloud Professional Services and spent five years working with Google Cloud customers on architecting and designing large-scale distributed systems before turning to advocacy and community work.

Find our guest on:

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show notes:

Additional notes:

Adriana's blog post on OpenStack

Transcript:
ADRIANA: Hey, fellow geeks. Welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And Geeking Out with me today, I have Abdel Sghiouar. Welcome, Abdel.

ABDEL: Hello. I should have. I should have known so I could brought my American accent. So, hey, y'all.

ADRIANA: Hey, y'all.

ABDEL: Hey, y'all. I'll try. I'll try.

ADRIANA: It's funny because the first time I heard y'all. So my husband worked in Jacksonville, Florida for a couple of years. He. He's in consulting. And one time I came down to Florida with him for. For the weekend because he had some work stuff to do. And we stop off at a gas station and they're. They're like, how y'all doing? I was like. I started. I. I think I started laughing because I'd never heard, like, "y'all" in real life.

ABDEL: Yeah.

ADRIANA: And I'm like, this is the most glorious thing ever. And I now just love saying "y'all". And my daughter bugs me about saying "y'all". She's like, don't say y'all. I'm like, "it's so much fun to say.

ABDEL: It is. It is. I love it. So. So, yes.

ADRIANA: A little sidebar. So where are you calling from today?

ABDEL: I mean, I'm home, surprisingly, because each time I talk to somebody, they're like, you're home. You're always on the road. I'm in Stockholm, Sweden. So that's where I'm based. But, yeah, usually I am somewhere.

ADRIANA: I know every time I see you on, like, on Twitter, I'm like, it's always a different city. You are definitely globetrotting.

ABDEL: Yeah, I am doing the way I say it is. I'm doing DevRel the hard way.

ADRIANA: Yeah, no kidding. But, you know, I have to say, like, we met in person last year at All Things Open. And I remember it was like, just before. It was definitely before KubeCon EU. And you were, like, giving me tips on. On, like, places to. To stay in. In Paris. You're like, don't stay too close to the conference venue, because then it's like, it's kind of a boring area. You want something that's a little bit further out so that it's closer to the cooler, touristy stuff. And I'm like, yes. So that was such great advice.

ABDEL: And I think we ended up being in the same hotel now.

ADRIANA: We did. We did. Yeah. Yeah. You recommended. You recommended a hotel to me, I'm like, that looks like a good spot.

ABDEL: Yeah, I remember that we shared like a. We shared like a walk and we had some croissant on the way to. To KubeCon at some point.

ADRIANA: Yeah, that's right. That's right. On one of the days we. We ran into each other. I'm like, ah, staying at the same hotel and running into each other. What are, what are the odds? Right?

ABDEL: Yeah, no, that's. That was fun. KubeCon Paris was fun.

ADRIANA: That was. I'm looking forward to the next KubeCon. Are you going to be. Are you going to be in Salt Lake City?

ABDEL: I am trying, but yes, most probably, yes, because I got accepted. I have a talk. Accepted. So finally. Thank you.

ADRIANA: Congrats.

ABDEL: Thank you. And yeah, so hopefully, hopefully I'll. I'll be there. It's going to be fun. We are planning some stuff for the podcast and me and, yeah, me and the colleague were accepted and then Kaslin is going to be there. So it'll be fun.

ADRIANA: Yay. That's awesome. Cool. I have many questions, but before. Before we get started, I'm going to start with the. With the lightning round slash icebreaker questions.

ABDEL: Sure.

ADRIANA: Okay. You ready?

ABDEL: Sure. Go for it.

ADRIANA: First question. Are you a lefty or a righty?

ABDEL: I am a righty.

ADRIANA: Okay. Do you prefer iPhone or Android?

ABDEL: iPhone. I've been experimenting with the Pixel 9 recently, the Fold one. Because I'm getting old and I need big screens and I do have to admit I like it, but I am not ready to convert yet.

ADRIANA: Yeah, so the folding one, that's cool.

ABDEL: Yeah, Nine Fold. The new model. The. Yeah, the big one, that is cool.

ADRIANA: You know, like, I actually miss my flip phone. As much as I love my smartphone, there is something so satisfying about, like, flipping.

ABDEL: Yes.

ADRIANA: Flipping your phone off, flipping your phone up to talk and then just closing to hang up and. Yeah, I miss those days.

ABDEL: Yeah. Unfortunately, the Fold doesn't open that way. Right. It opens like a book, but it's still.

ADRIANA: Oh, it's that kind of a fool.

ABDEL: Yeah. Yeah. So I think. I think that the one that you're talking about, the only model that exists is the Samsung Flip, they call it.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, that's what I was thinking.

ABDEL: But yeah, the Fold is like basically a big phone, but double because when you unfold it, it's like. Yeah, just a large. A small tablet, essentially.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I was going to say it sounds like a small tablet.

ABDEL: Exactly.

ADRIANA: Thing. I'd be curious to see one in real life. I don't think it'll make me convert from my iPhone, but I would still be curious to see it in real life.

ABDEL: I am still on iPhone just because it's just so easy when you have everything Apple and so, yeah, we'll see. We'll see if I get. If I ever convert.

ADRIANA: Fair enough. Fair enough. Okay, well, that leads to my next question. Do you prefer Mac, Linux or Windows?

ABDEL: I'm both a Mac and the Linux user. I've been a Linux user forever, since my start of my career. Like, I started with Mandrake, which then became Mandriva, and then eventually Fedora and Ubuntu and Debian, and then eventually a few years ago converted to Mac just because it's easier for work. But I still have a Linux laptop and I still use Linux daily. So Windows, I have never used Windows in my life.

ADRIANA: Really? No way.

ABDEL: If you put me in front of a Windows computer, I wouldn't know what to do.

ADRIANA: Oh, my God. Lucky you.

ABDEL: Well, I don't know. Yeah, sure. Lucky me. Thank you. I guess.

ADRIANA: I'm sorry to the Windows people out there. No, I don't know. I've told a few people, I'm like, I have a bit of Windows PTSD. I grew up on DOS and then Windows 3.1 and the succession of the Windows. And then I discovered Ubuntu in the. I don't know, early. I want to say early 2000s. I had it running as a VM. I discovered Ubuntu and VMS at the same time. I'm like, "whoa".

ABDEL: Yeah, you could run a VM? Yeah. If somebody gets offended, I have three words to remind you. Blue screen of death. Or that's more like four words.

ADRIANA: You know, I have a blue screen of death T-shirt that I wear to conferences sometimes. And it's great when people are like, oh my God, that's so cool. I'm like, these, these are my people who recognize the blue screen of death, of course, and can relate.

ABDEL: Yes, yes, exactly.

ADRIANA: Absolutely. Okay, next question. Do you have a favorite programming language? And if so, what is it?

ABDEL: Um, I'm a Python developer. Always been a Python developer for a very long time. I picked up Go a few years ago. I am learning Rust, and if you would have asked me this question six months ago, I would probably not even mention Rust because Rust has this like, learning cycle where you are fighting Rust and Rust is fighting you for a few months. And once you get the heck that, like the heck out of it, it becomes actually enjoy, enjoyable to write code in it. So in order of if in in order, I would say Python, my preferred language, go, obviously, I love Go. And right now I'm really having a good time actually learning and coding stuff with Rust.

ADRIANA: Right on. Yeah, I've heard, like, people who like Rust like Rust, but I always hear the learning curve is just outrageous. Yeah. I have not dipped my toes into Rust-land. I'm with you on the Python thing. I love Python. I came up in the Java world, did Java for a really long time, 15, 16 years. And then a friend introduced me to Python. I'm like, how could I be introduced to Python in such like a late stage of my career? But it's all good. And then I'm like, I've fallen in love with Python. It's like such. I don't know, it's like a nice. I. I think it's a pleasurable language to code in.

ABDEL: You know, there is one thing I, I really like. There is one thing that I really appreciate about Java, which existing go that makes me appreciate Go even more, is chaining functions. Like, you can chain functions like, you know, in Java with the way. Chain functions with the...

ADRIANA: Oh, yeah, the dot. Gotcha. Yeah, yeah.

ABDEL: And that exists in Go, and that's really amazing. It makes code so easy to read instead of like having to use variables to capture the output of one function to feed into another function. It's just one long line. It's just super amazing. Well, long, no pun intended for Java, but you get the point, right?

ADRIANA: Yeah, that's true. I do agree. That's nice. I think it's fun from a writing perspective, but if you're reading someone else's code, you're like, what the fuck is happening here?

ABDEL: That's true. Then with that comes the challenge of learning how to debug code and how to use breakpoints to debug code so you understand what's going on. But yeah, it's. It's both a blessing and a curse sometimes, I would say.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, I definitely agree with you on that. Cool. All right, next question. Do you prefer Dev or Ops?

ABDEL: Oh, that's a very good question. You know, it's funny, I studied software engineering, so I'm by training or by degree, if degree matters in this context. I am a software engineer. Yeah, I never really wanted or liked the idea of just doing pure developments as main occupation, just because I always liked the interaction with hardware and the automation parts and all that stuff. When people ask me a lot of time about my career, I always tell them I used to do DevOps before DevOps was cool because I was always in this intersection of how do you use software to automate infrastructure? Right. And that's. That's at the base of it, what DevOps is all about. Right. So I would say in between, I never really was in a job that, that required me to write applications, like purely, like just backends. And I never was in a job where I did just system administration kind of, kind of work. So I was always between the two.

ADRIANA: Ooh, that's awesome.

ABDEL: So, yeah, I love that.

ADRIANA: I love that. Yeah. It's funny, the way that you describe it is. That's what I love so much about DevOps too, is you get the software stuff, but you're getting to automate infrastructure and I don't know, it's so neat.

ABDEL: Yes. You get to understand how things actually work after they are developed.

ADRIANA: Yeah, exactly. It's funny, I went through a period in my career, I had left tech for a bit, and then when I returned, you know, someone asked me, like, what do you want to do? What do you want to do, like, with. With your career now that you're back? And. And I'm like, I really like the infrastructure side of things. I really like writing code. I wish there was a way to marry the two. And this was like before, you know, DevOps had become like, you know, like a household name. And then, and then, like, I learned about DevOps, I'm like, what? Where have you been all my life? You know?

ABDEL: Yes. And I mean, putting aside all the, you know, the how to say all the things that people have to say about DevOps, because people have opinions about it, of course, but like, just not going too much into what people think DevOps is or it should be, I think at the most basic idea of what it is, that's what I enjoy. It's anything that is intersection between the two worlds.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, I agree. I love that. Okay, next question. Do you prefer JSON or YAML?

ABDEL: Oh, that's a very good question. I saw somebody today asking this question of like, what's your preferred programming language? What's your preferred configuration language that is not YAML. And don't tell me TOML.

ADRIANA: I saw that. I have to agree. I don't like TOML.

ABDEL: All right. I had to do something. Have you ever had to configure Containerd before? No, I haven't, because Containerd is TOML-based and it's horrendous. I would say configuration YAML for coding, JSON data exchange, JSON configuration, YAML.

ADRIANA: Yeah, that makes sense. I have to agree with you on that.

ABDEL: Cool.

ADRIANA: Next question. Do you prefer spaces or tabs?

ABDEL: Aren't they fundamentally the same thing? Aren't tabs just a combination? I mean, I'm just remembering, like, I have flashbacks to Silicon Valley right now, so.

ADRIANA: Exactly. Well, honestly, that's why I ask the question. I'm like, it's either going to be very polarizing. Polarizing where people have opinions, or some people are just going to be like, meh?

ABDEL: Doesn't matter. Right. What was that. What was that phrase? Like? At the end of the day, the compiler treat them the same way. So it doesn't really matter. Technically, I'd say I'm a tabs person. Yeah, Tabs is probably my most used. One of my most used keys on the keyboard.

ADRIANA: All right, two more questions. Do you prefer to consume content through video or text?

ABDEL: Oh, definitely video. Yeah. I hate reading. I mean, if it's short text, yes, but long text, no video, for sure.

ADRIANA: My daughter's the same way. She, like, she refuses to. She's like, I don't want to read books. And. And she learns all this, like, ridiculous stuff on YouTube. It's so cool. Like, she'll be like, today I learned about financial planning and today I learned about, like, you know, amputations. Like, not a joke. These are like real life examples. And I'm like, what?

ABDEL: It's like a wide spectrum of topics that she is interested in.

ADRIANA: I know the most random stuff, but, like, she learned some really cool stuff. I'm like, I am not going to interfere. Like, I'm not one of those parents who's like, you, you don't read, therefore there's something wrong with you. I'm like, no. Like, this is how you learn. And it's like, it's glorious. I love it so much.

ABDEL: So, you know, I. I like, since we're geeking out here, in my. One of my internships, I had to build an app for a person who is a PhD. Like a....doc...like a doctorate, right. Doing. Doing some research. And the research was in pedagogy. So the way you teach people. And there is this, like, I don't know if it exists all over the world, but in at least where I'm from, Morocco, it's like a methodology for teaching kids, which essentially is based on the research from the 1950s, I guess, or something. Some dude at some point came up with this like 44 questions questionnaire or survey that you can ask people and based on their answers, you can classify them in either visual learner, auditive learners, you know, like, do you learn by text, you learn by audio, do you learn by reading, do you learn by Applied, etc. Etc. Right. And which at the time, it was so cool because I had to build an app which was like a survey app. So I was learning was pretty cool. But then later I learned that this was actually bullshit. That research is BS. It has been debunked over, over and over because, like, no one is one style of learning where all multitudes, like, we're all multi. Multi, to use a term which is very popular these days, we're all multimodal. Like, we learn using multiple ways. So the reason why I'm saying this whole, this entire long story is what's interesting about, for example, video. YouTube. Right. You would assume that people watch YouTube, but I am quite sure that there are people now that just listen to YouTube. As in you launch YouTube in the background and they're listening to it.

ADRIANA: Yeah, like a podcast.

ABDEL: Yeah, that's hilarious to me because, like, like, okay, so let's say, for example, you are listening, listening to a video which explains how jet engines work. Did you actually learn how jet engine. Like, did you look at the animations that explains how it works or did you just, like, hear about it?

ADRIANA: Yeah, and that. That's the shortcoming of it because, like, my dad loves to send me YouTube videos. And I'm like, if you send me a YouTube video, chances are I'm not going to watch it because I don't have the patience to, like, sit there and watch a video. But then I'm like, if I just put it on while I'm, you know, like, doing dishes or whatever. And so that worked fine. He sent me this video about, like, I don't know, something to do with, like, the Moon's orbit and how it's, like, moving further from. From the Earth, I think something to that. Something to that effect. And so it was. It was all good until, like, they got into a part where they're showing diagrams. I'm like, goddammit. Now I have to, like, I have to pull out my phone and look at what they're showing in the animation.

ABDEL: Yeah, it's. It's actually pretty interesting. Yeah, it's. It's pretty interesting how people are actually consuming content in YouTube these days.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah. And. And then don't forget the YouTube shorts. Like, my daughter watches so many YouTube shorts, like, constant. I'm. It's like in either Instagram short, what are they called? Instagram Reels or YouTube shorts. And. And that. That's how she does her Learning, Sure.

ABDEL: Whatever works for your daughter, I guess.

ADRIANA: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, that's. That's cool. Okay, final question. What is your superpower?

ABDEL: Oh, I don't get asked this question quite a lot. I think I know how to be sarcastic. Like, I know how to use sarcasm in. In a way that is, like, makes a point without being hurtful. Sometimes people get hurt, but, like, you cannot. You cannot. You cannot accommodate everybody's feelings, I guess. But I can use sarcasm in a very good way, I guess. I guess that would be one of my superpowers.

ADRIANA: That's great.

ABDEL: So, yeah, otherwise, I cook very well. I'm a really good cook. They just. Yeah, the simple superpower. Like, if. If the world goes south, I am going to be fine.

ADRIANA: Okay, so I got to ask, what kind of stuff do you cook?

ABDEL: A lot of Moroccan food, since I am from Morocco, but I experiment quite a lot. I like to try out all sorts of cuisines from. From different parts of the world. So probably second to Moroccan would be Mediterranean food in general. A big fan of Asian food. Korean, specifically, a lot of Korean food. But, yeah, generally speaking, just whatever. I like experimenting. I like, you know, blending and mixing stuff together. And probably a big part of my money wasted, if that's such a. If that's a correct term to use, goes into, like, kitchen stuff.

ADRIANA: I mean, come on. Kitchen gadgets are so much fun.

ABDEL: They are, yes. But, like, how many knives do you need when you are a home cook? Right. Probably not 10. So. So. So, no, it's. It's. It's. It's fun. I don't know. I feel like it allows me to get out of the. Like, do something with your hands. Like, be kind of tactile in a way.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

ABDEL: So. So, yeah, So I have cooked for big parties before. My biggest party is, like, 40 people.

ADRIANA: Oh, wow. Does that include dessert?

ABDEL: No, I don't do desserts just because I don't eat sugar. I avoid sugar, generally speaking. So usually I don't. Or if I invite people, I ask them to bring dessert, but I can cook for big groups.

ADRIANA: Oh, that's very cool.

ABDEL: Yeah.

ADRIANA: All right, so party coming soon, your way.

ABDEL: Yes. Oh, my God.

ADRIANA: There should be, like, KubeCooking or something.

ABDEL: Yeah, we should probably do something like that. You know, there is, like, a boba. There is a SIG Boba now.

ADRIANA: That's right.

ABDEL: Yeah.

ADRIANA: I love SIG Boba. Yeah, I'm a big fan. I've got my bubble tea right here.

ABDEL: Yeah. We like to claim that SIG Boba started with the Kubernetes podcast because it literally started with an interview on the podcast.

ADRIANA: No way.

ABDEL: Yeah. It was, I think, Leigh Capili, if I remember correctly, interviewed during one of the KubeCons, and Leigh was talking about the fact that we need parties without alcohol. And it was Kaslin who was interviewing, and they were like, boba and then a SIG Boba and then another, like, a KubeCon after. It was like, a thing.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

ABDEL: So.

ADRIANA: Oh, my God.

ABDEL: So we like to claim that we originated the idea.

ADRIANA: Oh, that's so great. And this is actually a great segue into one of the things that I want to ask you about, which is like, your podcast.

ABDEL: Yes. Yeah. So I'm a co-host of the Kubernetes podcast. Me and Kaslin Fields. Been doing it for almost two years now. Slightly more than two years. And, yeah, it's a lot of fun. You get to talk to a lot of interesting people. It's a challenge. I mean, as you understood, you know, keeping something running is a challenge. And we do have, like, help and producers, and we only do audio and where we're gonna start doing videos soon. So, yeah, it's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun.

ADRIANA: That's great. Yeah, it. It's. It's funny. Podcasting is so much work. Like, when in my previous podcast On-Call Me maybe, we had a producer, so she would edit everything and she would do audiograms, send stuff out for transcription. But this podcast is, like, everything me.

ABDEL: Yes.

ADRIANA: And the. That. The extent of the help I get is, like, my daughter edits the videos, but, like, everything else is me. So I have to, like, I have. I have to send stuff out for transcription. I have, like, an AI tool that I use for that, but I still have to check to make sure that it's, you know, not spewing crap. So I still go through the script and, like, you know, sometimes it misinterprets words, especially OpenTelemetry. When someone says "OTel", it thinks it's "hotel" constantly. So, yeah, it's. But it's fun. It's such a great way. A great way to. To meet, like, really cool people is through podcasting.

ABDEL: Yeah. And I don't know, I feel like podcasts are one of these things where you can actually get access to a lot of people. I feel like people like just sitting and discussing for some time, so we can get pretty much anybody we want on the show. So it's pretty cool. Pretty nice.

ADRIANA: That's awesome. And did you. Is this a podcast that you inherited, or is that a podcast that you started?

ABDEL: We inherited It. So there used some. There was somebody else before us, and we took it over, like, 22 years ago. Yeah.

ADRIANA: Oh, cool.

ABDEL: And we've been. I mean, we changed a little bit. Some stuff. We reduced the schedule, like, the frequency, and we started doing some stuff. So one of them is the whole story behind the SIG Boba is we started doing interviews during KubeCon. So we go to KubeCon and we interview people, right? Oh, and, yeah, and then we produce an episode about. And then we do every KubeCon. So. So that's. That's, like, one of the things we do. And then we do a bunch of other things. It's. It's. It's fun to experiment also with different kind of contents to try to, like, try to attract different people. So. Yeah, no, it's pretty cool. It's a lot of fun.

ADRIANA: That's great. So when you. When you do the KubeCon episodes, like, do you find, like, a room where you record? Are you, like, on the floor, and just, like, chase people down with a mic and record?

ABDEL: We record on the floor, actually. So you have the background noise.

ADRIANA: That is impressive.

ABDEL: Yeah. So. And. And we are. One of our plans is to start doing video as well. I think that's going to be fun to just, like, stop people randomly and ask them, but not, like, I have a bunch of, like, fun things that I want to experiment with, so we'll see how that goes. But, like, yeah, I'm looking forward. It's going to be fun.

ADRIANA: That's cool. Yeah. I have to say, like, when. So my previous podcast, On-Call Me Maybe was audio only. And so when I started this podcast, I'm like, I want to do audio and video because I know there's some people who love podcasts, and there are other people who are like, I hate podcasts, but they'll watch video. So I offer it in both formats. And also, like, the fun thing about doing it, doing the video is, like, first of all, you can see some really cool office setups. Sometimes you can see some, like, awesome outfits and hairdos that you just don't get to experience if you're just recording the audio. So that's been. That's been kind of fun to experience. Experience as well.

ABDEL: Yeah. Yeah, that's. That's definitely. Yeah, that's. That's part of the plan. The other. Also part of the plan is to. I mean, if you have a phone, you can literally record anywhere. Yeah. So if you can, since I travel so much, it would be fun to be able to, like, try like travel and record in different parts of the world and just have, you know, some fun background or. I'm. I'm mostly interested in recording outdoors I think.

ADRIANA: Oh yeah, yeah.

ABDEL: Depending on the weather. So. So it be. It'll be fun. Yeah.

ADRIANA: Yeah, that's great. I, I did my last season of, of this podcast. I ended up with two episodes that I recorded during KubeHuddle and I recorded those like on site, outside and that was fun. It was like I'd never done an on site recording, but there was like a couple my, my two guests that I had on there. I've been trying to chase them down, like trying to align schedules. I'm like, we're going to be in the same place. I'm going to sit you down, we're going to record.

ABDEL: I've been, I've been to an event in Berlin a few weeks ago and during this event they had a podcast studio that anybody could use and that was actually a lot like, I really like the idea. I mean that's like most more professional. So that's was kind of triggered this idea of doing video because. Doing video on the go because then you can have different backgrounds and you can have, I mean maybe the quality of the video is not as important as far. As long as you can get the audio right and then you can get like people visible on camera, that's. That's all it matters.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I agree. I would definitely say like invest in a decent mic because I did last KubeCon North America in Chicago. I did a series called Humans of OTel, like for OpenTelemetry and I had these like really crappy Amazon mics that I had gotten. Like these, I guess they were, they were crappy lavalier mics and oh my God, like some of the sound quality was so bad. I, I had to like cut out a couple videos because I couldn't make out what the people were saying. And then, and then the next KubeCon, one of the OTel guys, Henrik Rexed said, he, he messages me. He's like, you know, I have some really nice recording equipment that we could use for the next KubeCon. I'm like, I'm like, oh, he's being so polite. Basically saying like, my audio quality was not that great. Please let me help you. And I'm like, I am happy to take the help. And his setup, like when we did the Humans of OTel for, for KubeCon in Paris was so sweet. Like he knows his shit, so...

ABDEL: Yeah, I saw, I saw, I remember, I saw the setup. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember like, yeah, So I, I used to. We used to record for the KubeCon episodes with the Rode Wireless 2. And I recently got a pair of the DJI DJI wireless microphones.

ADRIANA: Oh, nice.

ABDEL: Just because I like them, because they come in like a very nice case with both the receiver and the transmitters. But the case also double up as a charging case.

ADRIANA: Oh yeah.

ABDEL: And I did some experiments and the audio quality is pretty good. So I'm looking forward to start using that one and see how it comes out.

ADRIANA: Ooh, fun. New toys.

ABDEL: Yeah, of course. It's always a good time to use new toys, right?

ADRIANA: I know when people are like, oh, you have to get this mic. I'm like, okay.

ABDEL: They're not very expensive, so.

ADRIANA: No, they're not too bad. Yeah. I, I also like, after. After that incident at the. That first KubeCon in Chicago with Humans of OTel, I'm like, I need better mics and I need to obviously pay more than 50 bucks for. For my wireless mic. So yeah, it's definitely a worthwhile investment to get a decent set of lavalier mics.

ABDEL: Definitely.

ADRIANA: Definitely. The other thing that I wanted to ask is, you know, you mentioned that like you had studied. You said you studied software engineering in school, right?

ABDEL: Yes.

ADRIANA: But you now work and you found your way into the DevOps space. You work as a developer advocate currently, right?

ABDEL: Correct. Yes.

ADRIANA: In the Google Cloud space, right?

ABDEL: Yes.

ADRIANA: Yeah. So can you talk about how you found yourself in this role?

ABDEL: It's. Oh, it's long story. Okay. I'll try to make it short. So a little bit of background. So I studied in Morocco. Right. So I am originally from there. I was born and raised there. I studied my master's degree in software engineering in one of the schools we have in Morocco. Morocco, for those who doesn't know, we follow the same. The same system as the rest of Europe. So that's basically high school bachelor, masters. Right? That's. I think that's the American version. But we say licence-master. It doesn't matter. Like three years you get a bachelor, five years get a master's. Right. So I got my masters in software engineering and my first job. And this is where things started being interesting for me in my career. My first job was actually in a data center.

ADRIANA: Ooh.

ABDEL: Yeah. Like an actual physical data center.

ADRIANA: Oh, damn.

ABDEL: Like, yeah. Yes, pretty much.

ADRIANA: So you were cold all the time?

ABDEL: Actually, it's a very interesting point. A lot of people think that you need to run data centers at sub zero temperature. You don't hardware, like data center grade Hardware is made to sustain very high temperatures.

ADRIANA: Oh, good, Cool.

ABDEL: We definitely had customers that wanted us to run their server rooms at like 10 degrees, 10 degrees C. I don't know how much is that in Freedom units.

ADRIANA: I'm a Celsius girl, so.

ABDEL: Okay, from the right part of the world. So. Which is too cold. It's cold even for humans. Right. So that's just. Yeah, but no, we run our. I mean, of course, the colder you want your data center to be, the more energy you're going to spend or waste. Right. So yeah, but yeah, I joined this company that was looking for. Initially they were actually looking for somebody to help them set up their internal systems because the data center was new. So you have, you know, your ticketing system and your CRM and all your tools that you need to actually make the thing operational. Your monitoring systems and all this stuff. And by monitoring, I'm talking back the days, Nagios time and you know, SNMP and old school before it became cool and we started calling it Observability, I guess. So I started there and yeah, that role was little bit of software engineering, little bit of automation, so kind of DevOps, right?

ADRIANA: Yeah.

ABDEL: And then through that role, I got contacted by Google and they actually hired me to work in their data center in Belgium. So that's how I joined Google. Yeah, we have data centers obviously all over the place, so Belgium is one of the biggest ones in Europe. So I joined that team and continued doing same thing. So a little bit of, you know, a little bit of automation, a little bit of system administration. Then a few years later, cloud started becoming a thing, at least for us. I mean, I guess it existed all over for other companies. But Google started being kind of more serious about it. And in 2017 they wanted me or they hired me to join a consulting team, an internal consulting team. So it's a team that basically works with external customers and help them architect, migrate, whatever, whatever that needs to happen to get stuff from where they are to Google Cloud. Right. So I joined that team initially to work on infrastructure because that's my background.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

ABDEL: But like very quickly I started working with Kubernetes. This is Kubernetes in 2017. So it was not as complex, I guess, as it is today, and I started learning it. I had no idea what containerization was. I had no idea what I. I think the only experience I had before was Mesos. But Mesos is like it's an orchestration system, which is similar to Kubernetes, but it's orchestrates virtual machines and not containers. Right. And I did work a little bit on OpenStack before. So conceptually it's the same idea. You are still orchestrating workloads. It just had different levels of the stack. Right. And yeah. And then just started learning Kubernetes and somehow became an. I'm putting air codes, SME, subjects matter, experts.

So, so then. And then parallel to this and back in the days when I was still living in Morocco, I was all. I was very active in the Ubuntu community because I started with Linux, right. So I was a member of the local user group. So that's like, yeah, the user group for, for Ubuntu. And we were doing Linux parties events, you know, install parties. We just go to university and people come with a laptop and we will help them deploy Ubuntu, help them sort out drivers, you know, give them like functional environments where they can like, you know, play with Linux. And then in my role as a consultant, I started actually doing conferences and my first conference was back home.

So there is a conference in Morocco called DEVOXX. It's a large conference and in 2017 they invited me and 2018 I joined the committee and I am in the committee since that 2018. So I was like, damn, I like this idea of like, you know, presenting public speaking, talking to developers, understanding what people are trying to solve. More understanding what people are trying to solve than actually talking to them. Really. Yeah. And yeah. And then in 2022, I basically, five years in consulting, I was like, I'm looking for something new.

And I talked to the DevRel manager for eme. I was like, hey, I would like to give DevRel a go. And he was like, we don't have anybody in cloud native, so why not? And that's how I became joined DevRel.

ADRIANA: Oh, that's so great. Wow.

ABDEL: Yeah, it's a pretty, I think it's a pretty interesting transition in the sense of. The way I like to describe it is that I've been over time going up the abstraction layers from the hardware all the way into containers.

ADRIANA: It's so cool to see like basically everything in your life had been building up to that moment, right?

ABDEL: I guess, yes. Yeah.

ADRIANA: So then you were like, by the time you became a DevRel, it was like, it felt like a natural fit too for you.

ABDEL: Yes, yes, in a way. And also because I've always been comfortable talking in public, I guess I like, it always came natural to me. I think when I was actually back in my university time, I was doing tutoring for my colleagues in, like, in my class. So I would like, help people, you know, understand concepts, like after. After the actual class. And it always came natural that I think it's more. More coming from the fact that you just like to help people, not really wanting to talk at people. It's more like, hey, if I explain something and you understand it, I'm happy. Right?

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's such a satisfying feeling. Like, you know, you get it and now they get it.

ABDEL: Exactly.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Compared to like, I don't know if you had this experience in university. I had professors who, you know, were too smart for their own good and couldn't explain anything.

ABDEL: Oh, of course. Oh, yeah.

ADRIANA: You know, I. One of my memorable moments was I had. I had this midterm and I go to the professor during his office hours and I'm like, can you explain, like, why I got this wrong? And he's like, well, it's easy. Obviously, if you don't understand the question, then I can't explain it to you. I'm like, what just happened here?

ABDEL: Sounds like a Karen.

ADRIANA: I'm like, all right, well, thanks for nothing, buddy.

ABDEL: Yeah, I think that that's. That's probably. I mean, it's interesting, like the, the academic. I have friends in academia right now, like, we're in Sweden. I have. We have a lot of friends who are like researchers and, you know, postdocs and stuff like that. And, and they're like young and our age, and they had to all suffer through some of what you're describing eventually. Right. At some point. And I think that the. Probably one of the reasons is because when you are studying to become a professor, you have to build up so much knowledge that you end up not having to apply all of it. So you feel you are like, better than everybody else. Like, you obviously know more than your average students, right?

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

ABDEL: And so I have a friend who is a bio. Biochemist. She's like post doc and she does research and stuff and she has to teach. So she has one semester every year that she has to teach.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

ABDEL: And she. Sometimes she starts complaining about these kids, they don't understand anything. And I'm always like, remember when you were in their shoes, you also did not understand much. Right. So.

ADRIANA: Yeah, so true.

ABDEL: So I think that that's. Yeah, I had to experiment. I had to go through that as well. So. Yeah, whatever.

ADRIANA: I mean, I think we come back more resilient and I think then, you know, for. For people like us, where it's like part of our job to explain how things work in an accessible manner. I feel like you almost tap into that feeling of helplessness, of like, oh my God, it was horrible when I didn't understand this concept and I was so lost. And then, you know, the whole. The whole thing just got away from under me. Right. Versus, like, having someone who can explain things in a. In a way that's accessible, where, like, you're like, oh my God, I finally understand how this works. Like, it makes such a difference. Having that aha moment and seeing people get it, I think is so satisfying.

ABDEL: And that's exactly what happened to me six months later after I started learning Rust, right? So the aha moment, they're like, oh, now I know. Now I get it!

ADRIANA: This gives me hope. This gives me hope if I ever want to touch Rust.

ABDEL: I mean, you know how it works. Like, you start learning something and you go like through hello world, and it works and then it stops working and you don't understand what's going on. And I'm like, oh my God, I'm stupid. Oh my God, I'm stupid. Oh my God, I'm stupid. And you build up the stupidity and they're like, oh, no. I know, it's so true.

ADRIANA: It's like, you know, it. It's almost like if your program works the first time around, like, first of all, when that happens, I'm like, I'm shocked. Why? But then also, yeah, right? Like, are you sure? Yeah. Are you sure? But, but the other thing too, in some ways, it's like, it's almost like you're robbed of the experience of. Of the failure, which leads to, like, so much more insights into the problem compared to like, getting it right the first time. Like when you fail so hard that you've broken your system and I can't tell you how many times I've broken things beyond repair. And then you kind of have to like, just start building it from scratch, one thing at a time, and then you finally understand, oh, this is where it broke. Like, I feel like that is such a validating experience. Even though I, you know, I spent the last, like four hours, like in panic mode. Like, why isn't this working?

ABDEL: Yeah, yeah, that's true. I think learning to through failure is valuable. But also, like, you don't always have. And that's actually, I think you can relate to this. Like, in DevRel, you don't always have that luxury, right? Yeah, just sometimes you just. So I think my favorite thing that I would do in my current role is actually go on Stack Overflow. I am spending quite a lot of time there because I find that that's a really good resource for understanding what people are struggling with and trying to replicate the error and then walk my way back from that to try to figure out what was the intention of the user to start with. And then how can we solve this for the user, but how can we solve it for everybody else? Right? And that's like, that's so much. I get so much joy from that. Right. But that's something you can do. You can control your time, you can take time, you can do it, you have time to do it. You don't have pressure, you don't always have that. And the downside, I think, of DevRel is that you live in. I mean, I hate using this word, but you live in the cutting edge of the technology, that sometimes you are required to build stuff. And by stuff, I mean content about things that no one knows how to use yet.

New features, new stuff come out and you are expected to teach people how to use it. But, like, you don't necessarily understand how it works. Right. And we live in this space right now. Right, like AI. So it's definitely a very interesting kind of role to be in. And knowing how to balance these two things is quite challenging, but quite good to learn from, I guess.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, it is exciting. And you make a really good point about, like, being on the cutting edge means that you're probably one of the few people who is tackling this problem, which therefore makes you one of the few experts, even if you're not an expert in that at the time, which is a little bit terrifying. And I've definitely found myself in. In that position. Like, even. There was something in OpenTelemetry the other day where they had, like, they had updated the API for something, the OpenTelemetry Operator. So I was like updating my YAML manifests for it and I'm like, unfortunately, the documentation in the readme was not up to date, so I had to chase down the answer by going. It was a combination of going into the code, but also...Googl...not Googling...searching through Slack messages to find my answer.

ABDEL: What changed?

ADRIANA: And then I'm like, yeah, yeah, exactly. What changed? And then, and then once I got it working, I'm like, okay, now I'm going to go back to the readme and fix this. Because, like, if. If I was confused, someone else is going to be confused.

ABDEL: Yeah, yeah. And like, a lot of times when that happens to me, the same thing around GKE, which is our product, I mean our Kubernetes product. It's usually some change log that just slipped through the cracks that like that change happened somewhere. There is a comment, but it was not in the release notes. Right. The talk is not up to date. You know, different lab, but like to a large extent, I don't, I always think that that's something that would happen to anybody. Like any developer would eventually be faced with that kind of problems.

ADRIANA: Yeah, definitely.

ABDEL: And it is definitely part of your job as a DevRel to figure that out and figure out how that could be improved going forward. Right. Because like a lot of times people see DevRel as, oh, we just like travel and talk to conferences. No, no, no, no. There's a lot of time spent talking to engineering teams.

ADRIANA: Yeah, that's true.

ABDEL: And telling them like this is how, this is how things are supposed to work. I know that you don't think so, but let me tell you so it's a lot of, it's a, it's a two ways role. You talk to people outside your company, but you also talk to people inside the company.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which makes it a very, a very sort of unique role. You're, you're, you're basically bridging, bridging the gap, right? So that you're, you're, you're like telling the engineers like this is how people are actually using it.

ABDEL: So you better listen to me.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah. Which sometimes is hard like you know, putting yourself in the shoes of the engineer and getting that feedback where you're like, you kind of, you know, it's your baby. You've invested your time into like writing it a certain way and being told like that's not how people are using it. You have to sort of put, put your feelings aside. You know, I, I have this, the, this mantra that I try to live by. I don't always succeed, but I, I try to live by like never fall in love with your code because you know, you just, you never know like someone's gonna come along and, and do it better and, and you have to be open minded enough to be like, yeah, this is a better solution. I gotta let go of, of you know, what, what I wrote and not be so, so possessive about it, so.

ABDEL: Exactly. Exactly.

ADRIANA: Yeah. Cool. Well, we are coming up on time, but before we wrap up, I wanted to ask you if you have any pieces of advice or hot takes that you want to share with our audience.

ABDEL: Does AI count as a hot take?

ADRIANA: Oh, sure.

ABDEL: Uh, it's actually interesting. I am in the process of. I'm. I'm involved in some startup programs that are AI startups where we're supposed to review what the startup product is all about. And my hot take is the following. Not AI is not. Is not gonna solve all the problems that people think they are gonna solve. I feel like people are trying to shove AI like in places where it shouldn't, and it comes out very obvious. A lot of times when you look at something and they're like, but can't you just solve this in a different way? Why do you need to put AI everywhere? But, yeah, I know.

And my other hot take is Kubernetes is here to stick around. I think that a lot of people think that it's a faded technology. It's not. It's going to be around for a while. So just, I guess the more people learn to live with this and accept it, the better it's going to be for everyone.

ADRIANA: What are some quickly, some things that you kind of look forward to seeing in Kubernetes in the next little while?

ABDEL: Maturity, for sure. There is quite a lot of interesting. I mean, again, in the AI space, there is quite a lot of improvements happening in Kubernetes itself that are happening for AI, but I see use cases for them beyond just AI. Right. Like the community is definitely shifting and adapting to accommodate kind of AI workloads, AI and ML workloads. But the ramification of this is going to go beyond. Beyond the beyond. I mean, speaking of observability, just in the last version of Kubernetes, they have added quite a lot of things around device observability.

So if you have a GPU attached or a TPU, how can you expose metrics through the node and how can you monitor those? And that's pretty cool. But there are use cases where you have to attach all sorts of hardware to a node and monitor how that hardware is performing, and that's going to help solve other types of problems. And yeah, it's evolving and maturing at a very slow-ish pace, but it's at a very steady pace and I'm very excited to see what the future brings. And also there is a lot of things happening in networking space because that's kind of one of my areas of focus and I'm really excited to see how that goes.

ADRIANA: That's great. Looking forward to seeing more cool things come out of Kubernetes in the next little while. Yeah, well, awesome. Well, thank you so much, Abdel, for geeking out with me today. Y'all don't forget to subscribe and be sure to check the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media. Until next time...

ABDEL: Peace out and geek out.

ADRIANA: Geeking Out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Villela. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking Out is also produced by my daughter Hannah Maxwell, who, incidentally, designed all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the socials by going to bento.me/geekingout.

E17 ENCORE: The One Where We Geek Out on All Things Hashi with Riaan Nolan

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Adriana Villela, Hannah Maxwell, Riaan Nolan) — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 05:00:00 +0000

About our guest:

Riaan has worked for Multi-National companies in Portugal, Germany, China, United States, South Africa and Australia.

Certified Hashicorp Terraform Instructor
HashiCorp Ambassador 2021, 2022, 2023
Creator of Hashiqube - The best DevOps Lab running all the Hashicorp products
HashiCorp Vault and Terraform Certified
Certified Hashicorp Vault Implementation Partner
10+ years relevant DevOps experience with a strong focus on Automation and Infrastructure / Configuration in Code.

Find our guest on:

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show Links:

Transcript:

ADRIANA: Hey, y'all, welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery, DevOps, Observability, reliability and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela. Coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And geeking out with me today is Riaan Nolan.

RIAAN: Good morning, Adriana. How are you? It's good to see you. Happy Australia day. It's Australia day in Australia, so happy Australia day. At the moment, I'm working for a consultancy in Australia called Versent, and they've recently been bought by Australia's biggest telco, Telstra. So I'm a consultant for them. I do DevOps and HashiCorp stuff.

ADRIANA: Amazing. So you said you're calling from Australia? Where in Australia are you calling from?

RIAAN: I'm on the east coast in Brisbane. Brisbane, Australia, in Queensland. The state is called Queensland.

ADRIANA: Awesome. And significantly hotter than the crappy rainy weather of Toronto today. We are at a balmy 3C. And you are at what temperature right now?

RIAAN: Oh, my goodness. I'll tell you right now, weather. It's 25 degrees C right now...26 degrees C. It's 7:00 in the morning and it is going to go up to 30 degrees C today.

ADRIANA: Oh, wow. Hey, my kind of weather, it's lovely.

RIAAN: I tell you, it is so beautiful. We've got so many birds here, and thankfully I've got a pool here where I rent this property.

ADRIANA: Oh, that's nice.

RIAAN: If it gets too hot, I just jump in the pool.

ADRIANA: That is very nice. Super jelly. Super jelly. That's cool. Well, are you ready for our lightning round questions?

RIAAN: Yeah, sure. Let's see what you got.

ADRIANA: All right. Yes. This is a get to know you better icebreaker sort of thing. Okay, first question. Are you a lefty or a righty?

RIAAN: I'm right handed.

ADRIANA: Awesome. Do you prefer iPhone or Android?

RIAAN: I am on Android. I prefer Android.

ADRIANA: All right. And do you prefer Mac, Linux or windows?

RIAAN: Strangely, I'm the type of guy that used to run Linux on a Mac on my MacBook air. Yeah, Ubuntu.

ADRIANA: Nice.

RIAAN: Made by Mark Shuttleworth, who's from South Africa. But it just became a little bit difficult with all the changes. Work takes over. And so I've recently, well, not recently, about five years ago, switched to MacOS on a Mac.

ADRIANA: Oh, nice. So you were running like Ubuntu natively on a Mac. It wasn't a VM, it was like...actually...

RIAAN: I can't sometimes with the new stuff that doesn't work. But my old little MacBook Air that I got from Germany runs Ubuntu dual boot.

ADRIANA: Oh my God, how cool is that. That's amazing.

RIAAN: Because KDE is just such a great desktop. And it's got so many customizations and Windows gestures that it just makes your day to day and your working incredibly easy.

ADRIANA: Very cool. And now you're like, no, now it's MacOS on the Mac.

RIAAN: Now I've become not lazy, but when something breaks on my Mac because I work as a consultant, so I get a company PC and then sometimes I'm on Windows, sometimes I'm on Linux, sometimes on a cloud thing. So now I'm just the default OS with dev containers. So I use VSCode's dev containers, which means I just need VSCode and Docker and the rest I do inside of the container.

ADRIANA: Nice.

RIAAN: I really keep it so simple and so easy nowadays.

ADRIANA: That's awesome. Hey, that is the way to do it. To keep it simple. We overcomplicate our lives. So, awesome.

RIAAN: Yes.

ADRIANA: Okay, next question. What's your favorite programming language?

RIAAN: Listen man, I must come from systems administration. So I like Python and I like Bash and scripting. And then of course HCL is my favorite. And I used to start off with PHP back in the day on PHP, but I've since moved away from it. I used to do a little bit of PHP in Magento, but I'm just really in love with the infrastructure stuff and the DevOps. So I don't even know if you can call YAML and Cloudformation and HCL programming languages. You probably can't. So I'm a script kitty. Let's call me a script kitty, you know.

ADRIANA: All right, I love it. Okay, next question. Related. Do you prefer dev or ops?

RIAAN: I love both. And I really like the synergy. I used to do Puppet stuff, and when I discovered Puppet, I was like, wow, this is incredible. And then along came Cloudformation and I could just code something in Cloudformation and in the user data, pass it off to Puppet, and then do all of my stuff in Puppet. And that was the "Aha!" moment. We have finally arrived.

ADRIANA: Nice.

RIAAN: I like. What's that cake? A red velvet cake. It's a mix between the two and white chocolate, vanilla and chocolate. I love it so much.

ADRIANA: Awesome! I love it! Okay, another one. And I think I have an inkling of what your preference is. Do you prefer JSON or YAML?

RIAAN: To tell you the truth, I hated JSON when I started with Cloudformation, but it didn't support YAML. So I wrote so much cloudformation that I loved JSON. I started loving it. But what's more readable and easier for the users. I mean, I do like YAML. It is just so beautiful and simplistic and easy to read. So it's like your kids. Let's say I've got two kids. I love them both equally. The JSON is the kid with red hair and YAML is a beautiful dark brunette kid with hazel eyes. I love them both equally.

ADRIANA: I love that. I love that. Now, what if you threw HCL into the mix...as a Hashi guy?

RIAAN: I love HCL. It's the fastest growing programming language and you can use it everywhere and it's just so flexible and just so forgiving. The shorthand if else. It's just such a great. That's probably what I'm going to start my son off. He's almost ready to start learning something and I think I'll start him off with that because it's really powerful if you can write a little bit of HCL and deploy it, and there you've got ten virtual machines. Yeah, that will just be the thing I'm going to start him off with.

ADRIANA: That's very cool. Speaking of programming languages, so my daughter is like a perpetual artist. Like, she's just born artsy and my husband and I are both in tech. And she was like, "I'm not learning how to code." And I'm like, "But you're a great problem solver. You would be a great coder." But I'm like, "I won't push it on you because you do you." And then she took like, I don't know why, but she took a computer class in school this year and learned Python.

And she's like, and she's like, "Mom, I hate to admit it, but I love coding." And she's just wrapping up her semester and she's like, "I'm going to be so sad that there's no coding next semester because I really enjoy the daily coding challenges." And I'm like, that's vindicating.

RIAAN: People always say, oh, well, you get the creativity kind and then you get the. But I really think that programming and DevOps stuff is a very creative art so much. It's not the boring essay type of stuff. And even the typing is also a creativity outlet. I really think there is a place for it.

ADRIANA: Oh, yeah. And honestly, I think software engineering is such a creative profession. It's just creative in a very different way than. You're not painting on a canvas, a traditional canvas, but the IDE is your canvas.

RIAAN: Yes. And you have to use your imagination when you run into a bug, you have to kind of walk it through and I wonder, what is it now? Yesterday I got a bug where HashiQube wouldn't start and I was like, is it the new Vagrant version? And then I'm like, what could it be? Could it be Docker? It turns out it's the Docker. The new Docker at 25.0 doesn't let Vagrant start. And you have to be creative. Where should I start looking now?

ADRIANA: Oh my God. As a sidebar, let me tell you, every time there's a Docker update, I am like shaking in my booties because I feel like every Docker update causes my system to melt down and I can't run an update. I have to actually nuke Docker and then reinstall it and pray that other stuff that was relying on Docker is still working.

RIAAN: And then yesterday with that bug, I go read the Docker change log and they had some problems with the systemd update. So the Docker developers must be like, every time there's a systemd update and I can't even just update it, I have to nuke my whole thing. It's amazing how dependent we are on each other's work. It's like this ecosystem.

ADRIANA: Oh my God. Yes.

RIAAN: It relies on other components.

ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, next question from our series. Do you prefer spaces or tabs?

RIAAN: I like spaces. I love spaces. Tabs give me that feeling where somebody walked over your grave. When I see it, I'm just like..."Ugh!"

ADRIANA: That's awesome. That's such a great description. Okay, second last question. Do you prefer to consume content through video or text?

RIAAN: That is funny. I'll tell you, I like video. I'm in two minds of what do we learn easier? I think text is too slow to make us humans learn. I love reading my book. I'm reading at the moment is Jordan Peterson's "Twelve Rules for Life". But I've been trying this out now. So while I'm reading it, I'm listening to the audiobook on Spotify and I don't know yet whether this is going to make it stick, but now I'm using my ears, my mind, and my reading, and I'm just now busy checking it out. What is going to be the best way to get content through your thick skull?

ADRIANA: That is very cool.

RIAAN: Learn it quicker. So I don't know, but I do like videos. I do love it when they give a link in the video to a GitHub repository. Yes, because it's like copying code from a picture. Copying code from a picture. I'm like,

ADRIANA: Yeah, I know, right? Yeah. It's like, oh, I have to type this out.

RIAAN: Anyway, that's where I am at the moment. Let's go with video with a link to a GitHub repo.

ADRIANA: Awesome. I love it. You mentioned something interesting, which is like you're reading the book but also listening to the audiobook on Spotify. And I've done something similar. So I don't have too many physical books just because they take up too much space. But what I've done is I would buy the Kindle book but also get the Audible add on. So then if I was out for a run, I could listen to the book, and then if I was at home and in the mood to read, then I could open up the Kindle book and it would be in the exact spot where I left off in the Audible. And I'm like, oh, my God, this was like the best way to consume content, right? So for me, I thought it was so cool.

RIAAN: Yeah. Follows actually your audio.

ADRIANA: Yeah. Because they're tied the same. It's the same account, like the Audible account, uses my Kindle credentials. My Amazon account.

RIAAN: Incredible. Yeah. I still have to have a little bookmark in the book.

ADRIANA: Right.

RIAAN: To keep it kind of in sync. Incredible. Wow. That's a good tip. I love physical books, but I might just switch now. I don't know. I'll let you know.

ADRIANA: Yeah. My sister has a bunch of physical books, so she'll lend me one every so often. And I love the touch of a physical book. And there's something so satisfying about carrying a book around the house. But the convenience of the ebook is like, I can be like waiting at a doctor's office, open the iPhone and read my book.

RIAAN: Yes, I do like it. I do like the physical mean. I've got a couple of them. Another great one is this one from David Goggins, and I was fortunate enough to meet him in person in Brisbane. And the other one I read before that was this thing. So weird, man. I mean, you know, after COVID, just as I was reading it, I was just keep on thinking how lucky and how thankful we are to be out of this COVID thing because they were going to pass rules from the World Health Organization and mandate us locally to countries and not all countries are the same. And I don't know, it was creating a sticky situation.

So after this, I was just reading that book and every second page I was like, oh, thank God. I don't think I could have handled that one. So, yeah, I do like the physical books and stuff, but the Kindle is just so convenient.

ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. All right, final question. What is your superpower?

RIAAN: My superpower is probably, I'm curious and I'm quite patient. I can stick with a problem for a very long time. I might let it go for a little bit, but I would always come back to it and revisit it. And persistence is absolutely key. So I think that would be my superpower. I always say I'm not actually clever. My problem is that I'm curious. So through my curiosity, I just discover and I happen to learn stuff.

RIAAN: I suppose. That's my superpower.

ADRIANA: I love it. That's so great. Well, you've survived the lightning round questions. Awesome. Well, there's so many things I want to talk to you about, but one of the things, because you and I met when I was starting on my Hashi journey, where a coworker of mine found HashiQube, which you've created. And it is like whenever I have a chance, I will promote HashiQube to people, to Hashi folks, because I think it's such a great tool. To be able to basically mimic a data center setup of Hashi tools on your laptop, I think is incredible. And that it pretty much ports to your data center setup afterwards is super incredible and has saved my ass so many times, especially in my previous job when I was working with a Hashi stack.

So it was such a great way to learn how to use it, to have a setup that could mimic what we would have in real life without me having to figure it out. I appreciate that you figured all that stuff out. If you could talk a little bit about HashiQube and what inspired you to start it, where it started. And now, what are some of the new capabilities?

RIAAN: I totally hear your sentiment about being able to test something and mimic it in production because it's just so valuable. But really, where it started is when in South Africa, I was director of DevOps for Mage Mojo, a company that used to run Magento e-commerce stores on Kubernetes. But I really was looking for a visa, and I came to Australia and I was applying for so many jobs. I mean, if you can imagine applying from South Africa for remote jobs. I found it quite challenging at that stage, and I got a job as a consultant, and I was off the tools, mostly off the tools as the director of DevOps. But then being as a consultant, as you can imagine, your hands on the tools and that stage. I was working for Maritime Road Services. It's a government agency here in Australia and New South Wales.

And I was subcontracting for a company called Wipro. And the stack we were working on was Jenkins as the CI/CD, Ansible Tower as the configuration management, getting secrets from Vault, and then Vault maintaining these secrets and everything orchestrated with Terraform. So Terraform would install Vault and Terraform Enterprise at that stage and maintain the stack. So at that stage I was living in the central coast and my train ride was about 1 hour, 50 minutes, 2 hours. And I was new to Vault and I was new to Terraform and I was just like, oh, I need to get this stuff in my head. But then as I go through the central coast, there's this river where there's no mobile connection and it was just difficult to get Internet and download stuff. So I thought, I know I must do something different. And Vagrant, I used Vagrant before for developer environments, vagrant.

And then I put Vagrant with Vault and some Terraform in there with local stack so that I can learn how to code Terraform but not having a cloud account. And then when I get to work, I would try get access from Ansible Tower to this Vault and it just doesn't work. And I would go to the vault administrator and say, look, I think there's something wrong with this policy. And they were like, no, no, it's working. I was like, okay, well, now I'm going to test it on my local. I'm like, you see, if I remove this star, I don't get down the secrets, I don't get access to it, but if I add it, it works. So I used to go to the Vault guy and say, look here, this is my lab. This is where I'm testing it.

I think the problem is here. And lo and behold, the problem was there. And since then, as a consultant, you work on Kubernetes with Helm. And then I would quickly need to test some Helm Charts or Docker builds and DBT with Airflow. And this is really where HashiQube started and I needed a place to store my configs and this is where HashiQube came about, where I could just text and store my configs and that's the start of it.

ADRIANA: That is so cool. That's amazing. Yeah. And I can't say enough good things about HashiQube, because it's got all things. I want to go back to something that you said earlier. So you said that you used to be a director of DevOps and then when you moved to Australia, it sounds like you got into more hands-on stuff as a consultant. How was that transition like going from a director where you're not hands-on, to getting nitty gritty into the hands-on? How did that feel? What prompted the career pivot?

RIAAN: First of all, it was insane. I was so overwhelmed, I had impostor syndrome on steroids. The people that I worked at that consultancy, Servian, were extremely professional, and even just the way they looked. And when I came to Australia, the accent was quite thick. So I would sit in a meeting and they would speak English, but I wouldn't understand a word. They would use abbreviations. And so I felt completely overwhelmed, but I would just be consistent. Look, you've hit some goals in the past.

It's not like that. You don't know anything. But it was incredibly overwhelming because I used to use AWS and Cloudformation very successfully. Now, I don't know one line of Terraform and the Hashi stack with Vault, and it was just so overwhelming. But I must tell you, having a lab creates confidence. Having a place to test something out of the public eye, you can make stupid mistakes totally. It just gives you that place where you can figure something out and also break it slowly but surely. I decided, well, I don't know a line of Terraform yet, but I'm going to keep at this until I feel that I'm proficient and confident in Terraform.

And I just kept at it. I started with the associate exam. I then started trying to give courses on Terraform. And then I became a Certified Terraform Instructor. I did my Vault Associate Exam. And then lately, I'm a Vault Implementation Partner, certified. And so, you know, it really starts off very organically. And so where I started and why I wanted to come to Australia is before that, I was for four years in Berlin, and my son was born in Berlin.

But I really wanted him to know his parents and his grandparents and my brother and his kids. And you can't do that from the other side of the world. So we moved back to South Africa. You know, the situation there, I was retrenched four times in South Africa, and the place is a little bit, due to the corruption in government, there are quite high crime and murder rate, and you just feel unsafe. You have to look over your shoulder. As a man, you can handle it pretty easily. But my wife was always getting nightmares and stuff.

And I just thought, like, I can't live like this, man. My kid is five years old. I need to give him a better future. I can always go back. I've still got some family there. But then I started looking around and as director of DevOps, my visa to the US didn't quite work out. It was dragging its feet. And so the guy said, well, you can go work in Ukraine with our Ukraine colleagues.

So I had the visa stamped in my passport. But then this job from Australia came about and I was just like, oh, the language transition, the weather is more up my alley. Yeah, I'm just going to go for this. And I had the chance of staying director of DevOps, but I also had the chance of learning something new and doing something new. And I always kind of take, I wouldn't say the hard way out, but I take the uncommon, charted...that way. And so I'm so happy looking back at it, that I did come to Australia. That's the whole story. So now, hopefully by April, we'll be applying for Australian citizenship and that will conclude our five year journey.

ADRIANA: Oh, wow.

RIAAN: Citizenship in another country. I tell you what incredible last five years.

ADRIANA: That is such an adventure. I mean, you're not only pivoting your job, but you're also moving to a totally different country, starting fresh. Like, so many changes, and just making it work.

RIAAN: Yeah, I tell you, it was just absolutely incredible. But Australia is such a welcoming country. It's truly the rainbow nation with all of these nationalities. I mean, I go to my kids' school and I see Chinese and Filipinos and Indians there and know, and Kiwis from New Zealand and Africans and us from South Africa and all these kids play soccer together. And when I have my South African accent and the Indian parents have their accent, but all the kids sound Aussie. Yeah, mate. How are you doing, mate? And I thought always just. It is just so beautiful. I'm always astonished at how incredibly beautiful it is.

ADRIANA: Yeah, that's so cool. Wow, that is such an awesome story. Thank you for sharing.

RIAAN: My pleasure, my pleasure. It's such a feel-good story for me. I often look back at it and I'm just like, wow, it's so funny. Sometimes you look back at things you did two years ago and how this is now playing a role in your current day and age, but two years ago, you didn't know that what you were doing was actually going to, but you stick with it and you feed and it grows and. Yeah, that's so funny how life is.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I totally know what you mean. I always tell people, everything that we've done in the past prepares us for this point in time, right in the present. And as you said, you don't necessarily know that it's going to lead you here. But it feels like it's been kind of in the works, right?

RIAAN: Yes.

ADRIANA: Or maybe because it happened.

RIAAN: Yes. And if it feels good, do it. I liked your episode with Kelsey Hightower. I mean, he's also quite emotionally intelligent, and I would think quite a hyper aware individual to spot your podcast and ask the question. And, I mean, I really just am inspired by people. Like, I mean, well done, Kelsey. I mean, you've also inspired me. So hats off to you, mate.

ADRIANA: Thank you.

RIAAN: And I love your podcast and all the stuff you do. You're talking at HashiTalks now around the corner. Yeah, that's right.

ADRIANA: HashiTalks. Yeah. And you've got a talk as well, right, for Hashi talks?

RIAAN: Yes, I do. Everyone teaches you how to write Terraform code, but no one teaches you the scaffolding surrounding it, like dev containers, managing Terraform versions, scanning your code, doing the linting having environment, and everyone is like, oh, you must have micro repos. Mono repos is so bad. But this whole development lifecycle, just try to commit to three repositories with other maintainers and make prs and then wait and see how long you can get that code merged in. It is incredible. And so I'm going to give a talk a little bit about that to just help people get started and accelerate their Terraform development. So I'm looking quite forward to that.

ADRIANA: Oh, that's awesome. That sounds like such a great topic.

RIAAN: Yes. There's so much stuff that goes on behind the scenes that writing Terraform code is becoming the easy part.

ADRIANA: Yeah, it's funny because I think, like many things, getting started withTterraform is easy. And then when you actually go to apply it for real life scenarios or know, I think a year ago, I was doing some work in terraform, and I want to clean up my code, and I'm like, I want to use modules. And I had everything working without using modules. And then I go to use modules, I'm like, crap, it's broken. You go to prettify your code, and it's like, another roadblock. But this is the cost of beautiful code. But these are the things that you don't realize as you go and evolve your code, right?

RIAAN: Yes. And making your modules usable. So now you need to write modules and patterns. And I don't know if you've ever seen the Terraform EKS Blueprints repository. If you Google "Terraform EKS Blueprints", that is just such an amazing little project. So it's deploying EKS, but in there, they've got patterns and these patterns are just so well written. And if you look at the multitenancy with teams, one, I've used it at great success in my consulting gig last year.

And I just want to say, hats off to those maintainers and developers. They've really done a good job. And if you ever want to see how to write...what good looks like, that would certainly be the repository to visit.

ADRIANA: That's good to know. Thank you. Yeah, I just checked it out, as you mentioned, that it looks very well organized.

RIAAN: It's incredibly well organized. It's really incredibly well...and when you start using it, you will see, oh, wow, there's been a great deal of thought that went into this thing.

ADRIANA: Yeah, that's so cool. I always appreciate when folks put in that effort, especially in the open source world, because it's like extra work, right? And that someone was cared enough to just make it easily consumable for me is so nice.

RIAAN: It's so selfless and I appreciate that little bit of it. I always think that people who contribute to open source projects, their glass is really overflowing because you have your personal life. I mean, you have kids and a family and a career, and yet you can still...and some people when they open up tickets, they're like, this doesn't work. Fix it. Yeah. Oh my goodness. Okay. And then you have to be nice. And I mean, it's really like helping a parent with their Internet problems. Right?

ADRIANA: I know, right? Oh my God, so true. Yeah. And especially, as you said, the ticket is, "This doesn't work." And it's like, "Okay, can you tell me what isn't working?"

RIAAN: Sounds so funny. But I always think back, our parents taught us how to tie our shoes and not to be cringey or anything, but they taught us how to wipe our bums. And really they had to have this insane amount of patience with us and try and try and try again. And I was trying to remind myself, especially when I've got a kid now nine years old, before that, I was kind of oblivious to the fact. But now that you've got a kid, sometimes you just have to stand back and laugh at the situation because it's just so funny. This development thing takes time.

ADRIANA: Yeah, it's so true. That's a perfect way to describe it. Because when you have a kid, you're seeing your kid experience things for the first time, things that you take for granted, right? Like learning how to walk, learning how to crawl, or them, like when they're babies and they discovered that they have feet and they stick their feet in their mouths and you're like, oh, that is so cool, right? And these are things that you don't think about because it's like, yeah, I know where my feet are.

RIAAN: I forgot what it feels like. Or what it tastes like to have your big toe in your mouth.

ADRIANA: Right?

RIAAN: I don't know what a big toe tastes like anymore.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

RIAAN: But I love the open source thing and also try to make things easy and consumable for people. I think that's the ultimate goal.

ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. So much work goes into open source and I think I'm heavily involved with OpenTelemetry and I'm trying as a personal thing that I am trying to live by, which is like recently I was developing some content around OpenTelemetry and then I was going through the docs and realizing, oh, it's missing some stuff. And so I'd write a blog post about it to clarify it. But then I thought, well, that's nice, but it's missing stuff from the OpenTelemetry docs. Let's be a good citizen and contribute back to the OpenTelemetry docs, right? If there's something that you can contribute, even something so simple like documentation, clarifying documentation, I think it's so important if you're able to take the time and make that pull request to make somebody's life a little bit easier, right? Because oftentimes the developer docs for an open source project tend to be your first point...where...your one stop shop, hopefully...They're definitely your original landing point, right? So let's as a community try to make these docs better, right?

RIAAN: 100% agreed. 100% agreed.

ADRIANA: Now, I wanted to switch gears a little bit, but still on the Hashi train of thought, you are wearing a Core Contributor t-shirt for HashiCorp. I was wondering if you could explain what that's all about. Like what does a HashiCorp core contributor do and what led you to there?

RIAAN: I got this last year in the post and I was just so happy to get mean. The Credley page says, "HashiCorp core contributors are individuals who are committed to the spirit of open source. They actively contribute to HashiCorp open source tools through submissions of pull request issues and bugs and contributor to documentation while advocating and adhering to the HashiCorp principles." And I've done a few pull requests and I help test stuff. I contribute to bugs and if anything, I just validate it and say, I've run this, I've tested this, it does work, whatever. I've got this problem here. And that got me this t-shirt, and I was just incredibly thankful. HashiCorp is quite a stunning community, and the individuals that make up this, I mean, you know, from the Ambassadors, they're a fun bunch.

They...the you, they...the me, they...the other people in the community. And I do think that they've got a certain gravitas to attract these certain individuals, like looks for like, and I feel welcome there, and I like contributing there. And just because it's such a nice stack. I mean, Mitchell, Hashimoto and Armon Dadgar, they really made something really mean. I do know they went through this BUSL license change, but I mean, it was kind of expected, right? It's a company. It needs to make money. We live in a material world. We all need to make money.

I understand it. To me, just the logical evolution of this next step. But that said, the contribution that they've made to open source and to helping people like me learn and the stuff they give us for free is just incredible. So I'll be forever thankful for that.

ADRIANA: That's so cool. And I love that you're being rewarded for your contributions with this designation. I think it's so awesome.

RIAAN: I do appreciate it as well. I contributed such a small contribution, and still they recognized that, and I was just thankful and appreciative. It's beautiful. It feels good to get a little gift or something.

ADRIANA: Yeah, totally. It's nice to know that the community appreciates. And on the same vein, like you mentioned, you and I are both HashiCorp Ambassadors. And actually you're the one who nominated me initially for the HashiCorp Ambassadorship. So I definitely appreciate that.

RIAAN: You know, because I always say, like, I meet a lot of people in my work, and this is not to be bashful or anything, but a lot of people are...If you can imagine a heart monitor and you see a blip on that monitor and I see blips, and I think that those blips should be recognized and called out. I think we should be the type of person that say, wow, you look good today, or, this is inspirational. I read your blog post, and I was actually surprised when I saw that you wrote all of these blog posts using HashiQube. I was like, wow, this thing has been out in the wild. And this is the first time I see it, and I was blown away. I contacted you, I think, over Medium.

ADRIANA: Yeah, that's right.

RIAAN: Because you were not only using HashiQube, but also writing about it and using it in different ways. And I was incredible. And that's exactly why I nominated you because I think these type of people should be called out and should be celebrated. And you were certainly inspiring to me. And if you were inspiring to me, I bet you you're inspiring to many others out there. And that's the next wave of Ambassadors coming up in the world.

ADRIANA: Yeah, for sure. It's been a great program so far. I think I've been an Ambassador for two years. When did you become an Ambassador?

RIAAN: 2021.

ADRIANA: Oh, awesome.

RIAAN: So this year I'll be an Ambassador again. You have to put in the work and the street cred and stay active in the community and stuff. But while you can, you should. If you can.

ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. I put in an application again for this year, so fingers crossed I get it again. Fingers crossed. Yeah, it's been great through the Ambassadorship program. They invited me last fall to MC HashiTalks Deploy in December. So that was fun. That was so fun.

I'd never MCed before, so I was super nervous. But they were very organized. They're like, this is how it's going to go and this is the order. And here's a table of who the speaker is. You just need to fill out this stuff as prepare a script for yourself. So it was like, okay, because I was full on panicking when I agreed to become an MC. I'm like, okay, that'll be easy. And then there was like all this process.

I'm like, oh my God. It is very overwhelming.

RIAAN: But they do make it easy for you, but they do support you in pulling it off. Easy is definitely the wrong choice of words, but they do very much support you in getting this thing across the line. And then in the end you look back at it and you're like, wow, that was fun.

ADRIANA: Yeah, it was a great experience and I'm so grateful for the opportunity that I was afforded because of being an Ambassador. So it's nice to have these little things here and there.

RIAAN: I love it.

ADRIANA: Now, one thing that I wanted to ask...you're very involved in...you do a lot of Terraform work. Have you played around with the now competitor OpenTofu?

RIAAN: That's a good question. And no, I have not. I mean I did use Terragrunt before and I actually quite like Terragrunt. And to be honest with you, I don't think that that was nice to make OpenTofu. I'm an open source guy, man. I've been using Ubuntu Linux since 2008 and I started using RedHat in 2000, actually RedHat 6.2. And there's always a way to go about things. And I believe in having diplomacy. Someone created it.

And now you're kind of like taking ownership of this and you're taking it. And that's also against the spirit of open source. So I have not tried using OpenTofu. I actually cringe when I hear that name. Sorry to say it, I know what they did with OpenTofu. I mean, I did think about it. It's Open TF Tofu and whatever, but I won't be using it. I'm just so know, it just feels weird to me.

It just feels wrong to me. And so I like Terraform. And in the same breath, I also haven't tried Bicep from Azure. I'm a ashicle guy, I'm a terraform guy. So I have not delved into that. And I wish them luck on their journey and stuff. But when I see that name, it's just worthy to me. So I've unfortunately not tested it out or anything.

ADRIANA: Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. Now, going back to one thing that you mentioned earlier, which was Terragrunt. Can you explain to folks who aren't familiar with Terragrunt what that's all about?

RIAAN: I mean, I do like Terragrunt. Just touching on the topic. I wish that they could have just played nice because it could have really benefited this ecosystem so much more. And the companies...there is enough money in the world for everyone. Trust me, there's no reason why...there's enough money. There's billions and trillions and gazillions. So there's always an amicable way to do something.

But getting back to Terragrunt is very. I like what the Yevgeni Smirnoff did. You write your module? Everything driven through variables. And so your module should be completely flexible, very dynamic. And then what Terragrant is, is they add a Terragrunt HCL file and then you can make your folders names, variables. So you can imagine if you've got an environments folder and you've got Dev, Prod, UAT, Low, Production, whatever, Non-prod in there, you can turn this folder name into a variable. So you can then define this thing at the very top-level and benefit from this in your modules. So you can say module name and you can use module name in your tags.

So when you do apply this Terragrunt stack, these Terraforms, you can benefit from all of this modules that you define in the top and top down. So for those who's ever used Puppet and Hira, it's very similar to Hira. So in Hira, you've got a common file and this common file can be used down in your hierarchy. But let's say you want to overwrite a key name down in a couple of folders, let's say environment. Then you've got dev, and then in dev you've got your availability zones or your regions and then further down you've got availability zones that you stack support. And then lastly you've got your Terraform module and you just want to override a key on a module somewhere down you just overwrite this key. And so what, Terragrunt was quite nice as they defined everything in YAML, so you can have complete very complex YAML code structures that you can then pass to many, very many Terraform modules.

And these things all get executed in parallel. And so you can bring up complex infrastructure environments quite quickly. And because your code is DRY, your Terraform modules can be used many times over and you just pass parameters to it which is defined in your YAML files. And this is how Terragrunt comes about. It's actually beautiful the way they've done it. It's really nice. It becomes a little bit complex when you debug yourself because if you can imagine you've got ten Terraform threads now running all at once and if one breaks, the rest of them also stops and it's like quite an avalanche of output. But as far as if you get to use it and you use it properly, then you can accomplish quite a lot very quickly.

ADRIANA: Cool. And on a similar vein, maybe not so much Terragrunt, but in general for Terraform, how do you test Terraform code?

RIAAN: So my Terraform code, what I do is I have an examples directory or a patterns directory next to my modules. So if you can imagine I would have in my top gun Terraform developer environment I would have Terraform and then AWS, GCP and Azure and custom. And inside those I'd have modules folders and inside of those I'd have our Terraform modules. Then next to the modules folders I would have patterns and the pattern would be Linux server behind load balancer. And that Linux server behind load balancer would just be a main and a variables and outputs that then reference these modules with the source stanza inside of these modules. And then I just build them or I run them and I apply them. I normally just do a plan and I see if it works. But I do run them through an init and if I want to test it all at once, I actually drop a Terragrunt HCL file in there and I use "terragrant run" or "plan" to test all of these things.

I use Terraform in conjunction with this and then I plan all of these modules quite quickly. And if my plan works, I leave it out there and then I wait till I run into it again or someone needs an update or something. And then I look at this again.

ADRIANA: Cool, that's so awesome. Well, thanks for sharing. We are just about at time, but before we wrap up, I actually have two questions. One, what is your favorite HashiCorp tool?

RIAAN: My favorite HashiCorp tool would really be Terraform at the moment. There's a few. There's Vagrant. I love vagrant.

ADRIANA: Vagrant is great. I really love it. It was my first Hashi tool.

RIAAN: It's incredibly powerful. I mean, I really must take a shout out to vagrant. I mean, thank you, Mitchell and Armon for writing this thing. I use it every day, still. It's incredibly powerful. So I love Vagrant. I dig Terraform because that's my staple. I eat that thing every day for breakfast.

I love Nomad. I run Nomad jobs quite a lot. And so nomad is just so easy. You just drop it on a server and there could be still PHP and Apache sites running on there, but there's Nomad with containerized jobs and you can just migrate it and it's so cost effective and so easy to test it. And I've also liked Waypoint at the moment.

ADRIANA: Oh, Waypoint, yeah, I haven't played with Waypoint for a while. Yeah, I need to play with it. Because I think when I played with Waypoint, it was very early days and I can early days. I'm so curious to see how it's evolved since then.

RIAAN: It's got a lot of potential, and then Boundary is the next thing I really need to sink my teeth in and get a couple of examples into HashiQube. Just get people started and that's on my to do list to do. But yeah, there are so many.

ADRIANA: So many awesome tools.

RIAAN: You know what I mean? To pick a favorite. I mean, it's even difficult to pick a favorite cloud because all of these things just enable you to do stuff. So mean. GCP has got its way of working and Azure has got its way of working and AWS works in its ways, but they all help me on my day to day and I'm just so thankful we've got cloud computing. I mean, holy moly, can you imagine? Still back in the day.

ADRIANA: I know, right? Yeah, it's wild to see how much software has evolved in the last 20 years. Holy cow. Mind blowing.

RIAAN: Mind blowing coming from NT4 and A+ where I started with chips and RAM and stuff. I mean, it's incredible to see how it's evolved.

ADRIANA: I totally agree. I totally agree. I mean, there was no cloud when I started my career.

RIAAN: No, just think back fondly. I mean, I used to use Gentoo and compiling stuff and running my own postfix mail servers and pure FTP servers and. Oh my goodness. Incredible.

ADRIANA: And now look, the world is at our fingertips with cloud. That's pretty mind blowing. Well, before we wrap up, do you have any final words of wisdom for our audience?

RIAAN: Well, maybe if you want to check out hashicube. I always plug that little thing. It's just so incredible to see a little docker container running more docker containers.

ADRIANA: Oh my God, it's like mind blowing sometimes.

RIAAN: Just think back and how lucky I was to get that to work. It is just incredible. And so easy to POC stuff and get stuff up. So, I mean, if you want to check out HashiQube, if you want to learn or play around with, that's my DevOps lab from now on going forward. Yeah, so cool.

ADRIANA: It's a great lab.

RIAAN: And that's the only plug. And see you guys at HashiTalks in a couple of days.

ADRIANA: Yeah, totally. The other thing I want to mention on that same vein is I think you getting vVgrant to work with the Docker provider is probably one of the best running examples of Vagrant with the Docker provider, because I don't think there's a lot of documentation around that. So thank you for that. Hats off to you because, yeah, I think getting that to work, which you did, to be able to run HashiQube on the M processor, Macs, that's why you needed to get that running, right.

RIAAN: I so like it because it is just so light and if you do Vagrant SSH, it's very difficult to say you're in a Docker container now.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I know. You would never know. You would never know.

RIAAN: And it's incredible. I can really see things going that way. It's the way I do stuff at the moment. I no longer do VMS, so even when I run HashiQube on an EC2, or when I want to run Ansible AWX Tower on an ec two, I just HashiQube and "vagrant up".

ADRIANA: Yeah, it's the way to do it. I love it. Well, thank you so much.

RIAAN: Thank you for having me on your show. It's so good to see you. And shout out to your daughter, who I believe is doing your editing for your videos and job well done. I take my hat off. Thank you so much for your time and it's so good to see you again.

ADRIANA: Yeah, it was great to see you as well. And thank you, Riaan, for geeking out with me today. And y'all, don't forget to subscribe. Be sure to check the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media. Until next time...

RIAAN: Peace out and geek out.

E16 ENCORE: The One Where We Geek Out on Breaking Barriers with Edith Puclla

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Adriana Villela, Hannah Maxwell, Edith Puclla) — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 05:00:00 +0000

About our guest:

Edith is a Tech Evangelist at Percona, a company known for its work with open source databases. She used to work as a DevOps engineer, helping IT companies and startups set up and use DevOps. After taking a break for two years, Edith started working with Open Source, which helped her get back into the job market. She has made valuable contributions to the Apache Airflow project during her time with Outreachy and is working on translating the Kubernetes website into Spanish. Edith is also an ambassador for the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, focusing on creating content, and is recognized as a Docker captain. She has taken part in tech programs like Stanford's Code in Place and studied at 42, a coding school in California. Recently, Edith moved to the United Kingdom on a Global Talent Visa, which was a big step forward in her life.

Find our guest on:

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show Links:

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Transcript:

ADRIANA: Hey, y'all, welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. Geeking out with me today. I have Edith Puklia. And where are you calling from today?

EDITH: Yeah, I am calling from UK. London, UK.

ADRIANA: Awesome. I've had a few people on the show that have called in from London. I think you're like the third person from London. I had Abby Bangser, who I think it was Abby who introduced. Right? Abby is the ultimate connector of people. So thank you, Abby, for introducing us.

Yes, I had Abby and then Jennifer Riggins, who is a tech journalist. You probably saw a bunch of her pieces on The New Stack. And then you. So you are my three London, UK people. Very exciting.

EDITH: Thank you.

ADRIANA: And we share a South American connection as well, right?

EDITH: Yes. You are from Brazil, right? Peru here.

ADRIANA: Yay. Home of the llamas.

EDITH: We love llamas. We love them.

ADRIANA: Oh, yeah, you have the awesome mug. Yeah. I was telling you earlier before we started recording that llamas and capybaras are like my two favorite animals in the world, so I always get excited when I see either one of them. Cool. Well, let's start with the lightning round questions. Are you ready?

EDITH: Yes.

ADRIANA: Okay. Are you left-handed or right-handed?

EDITH: Right.

ADRIANA: Okay. Do you prefer iPhone or Android?

EDITH: iPhone.

ADRIANA: Okay. Do you prefer to use Mac, Linux or Windows?

EDITH: Linux. I love Linux.

ADRIANA: All right. Hardcore. I love it. What is your favorite programming language?

EDITH: Okay, there are many. Now my favorite right now I can say that it's Rust.

ADRIANA: Very cool, very cool. I hear that it's great. But also very complicated to get into.

EDITH: Yes. I mean, I don't code like a deep programming. I am just starting, just learning, but I was fascinated for what you can do with it.

ADRIANA: Cool. I'm curious as a sidebar, what got you interested in learning Rust?

EDITH: Because how you can easily integrate with other technologies. For example, with Docker I was trying to play, I was able to do fast with Rust. And using Chat, GPT is also a great tool to learn,.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. Very cool. Okay, next question. Do you prefer Dev or Ops?

EDITH: Hard question here. Yeah, I prefer Ops.

ADRIANA: Okay, cool. Next one. Do you like JSON or YAML better?

EDITH: YAML. I feel that I can read it.

ADRIANA: Yes. Yeah, that's my thing with YAML too. I think it's easier to read. Okay, next one may be controversial spaces or tabs? Which one do you like better?

EDITH: Spaces or tabs? I use spaces.

ADRIANA: All right.

EDITH: Yeah. You?

ADRIANA: Okay. So I used to be a big fan of tabs, but then I started using spaces, especially when working with YAML, because it felt a little bit more organic for me. Yeah. So I used to be very adamant, like, no, it's got to be tabs. But now I'm like, I'm open right now. I'm down for spaces. So, yeah.

EDITH: Okay.

ADRIANA: Also, kudos to you for turning the question back on me.

EDITH: But I am curious about you too. Why you too?

ADRIANA: I love it. Very awesome. Okay, two more questions. Do you prefer to consume content through video or text?

EDITH: Okay. I love videos. I have a hard moment reading a lot of text, but videos is more easy for me to consume for you. I can imagine that too, because you do videos a lot also, right?

ADRIANA: No, it's mostly text for me. It's funny, though. I was talking to my dad yesterday, so my dad does not...he was like, I do not like podcasts. I'm like, but my podcast is on video, too. He's like, it's just boring to see people's heads on video, but he's more of a video guy because he likes the visual stuff. He refuses to do podcasts. And my daughter loves, loves, loves videos. She's always learning things on Instagram or YouTube.

EDITH: And you have a lot of articles.

ADRIANA: Definitely. Like, I prefer writing. I think I've embraced video a little bit more. I used to be very scared of editing video, and I feel like nowadays the tools have made it easier to do video edits so that it looks like I'm not fumbling around. So I feel a lot more comfortable doing video editing compared to, like, ten years ago when it felt impossibly hard.

EDITH: With writing. I feel really hard writing. Long time ago, I was not able to write a single article that take me too long to write. But now I feel I'm more comfortable because I am trying to do constantly.

ADRIANA: Oh, that's awesome.

EDITH: Yay.

ADRIANA: I love to hear stuff like that. Final question. What is your superpower?

EDITH: Patience.

ADRIANA: Patience. I love it.

EDITH: Yeah. You?

ADRIANA: Oh, jeez. My superpower. I think I'm really good at connecting people together. I find myself in situations where I'll have a conversation with someone and then they'll ask me a question. I'm like, I know a person that you can talk to. Yeah.

EDITH: You have a lot of people in your mind.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I guess so. I guess so. At least remember people who should be talking to each other.

EDITH: That's a superpower.

ADRIANA: All right, cool. Well, that was it for the lightning round questions. You survived! Yay.

EDITH: Thank you.

ADRIANA: Okay, so now for the fun stuff. As I mentioned before, we got connected through Abby, and then it turns out we have another connection in common, which is we're both CNCF Ambassadors from the spring 2023 group. So, very exciting. I guess our first year of ambassadorship is coming to a close, and I guess they're renewing applications end of this month. So my question to you is, how has it been this last almost year as a CNCF Ambassador?

EDITH: Almost a year because we started at March. I think the last year. I was here in London, too. Then I go back to Peru. And how I feel this year being CNCF Ambassador, I think it doesn't cost to me too much make things for being Ambassador because I was in the category. If you see there are several categories, right? Run events or you go many, you can choose whatever you want. I choose the part of content creations which I love. So when I inspire it, I just create a video. I just make a flyer or a pdf of anything which I do in my free time. And I love it because editing videos and making that things require a lot of patience.

ADRIANA: Yes. There's your superpower.

EDITH: That's my superpower. And I can do that. I feel really excited. I feel like I'm going to apply again. For the last month, I was not just involving in content creation, I was also involving in organizing events. We are organizing Kubernetes Community Days. Lima, Peru is the first time we are running these events in Peru with other members of the community and also being members of CFP proposals reviewers, for example. I was involved in many other things.

No just content creation. A lot of things to learn. A lot of things that I never did in the past, but I never thought to do it. But I am doing. Wow, this is amazing. It's hard sometimes because it costs to learn, but it's very interesting and I like.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. And I have to say, I really enjoyed being a CNCF Ambassador because of the different opportunities that it's opened up, like just making new connections and being given opportunities to review CFPs and being given speaking opportunities that you necessarily wouldn't have had otherwise.

EDITH: Yeah. I feel in the same way, just to tell you that the first trip that I did in my life outside Peru was for CNCF because I won a scholarship. So I didn't speak English, just my name. And I got to Seattle and saw a different experience. Just being in the KubeCon in Seattle, it was just amazing. And things that made me think, wow, there is doors here that I should start open. It's here I should go. I saw a lot of opportunities, and since then I go to that side of CNCF and all those communities my career start to doing that. I think the support for women in tech is also very valuable what we are doing as a community.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I do want to go back to your earlier comment on your first trip out of Peru, and you said you didn't know English at the time. How long ago was that?

EDITH: I'm sorry? It was 2018. Yes. I mean, I study English. Yes, I talk basic English, but outside you is different.

ADRIANA: It's different, yeah. It's so true. Because it's the slang, it's the technical terms. It's funny, because I was thinking back...as you mentioned, I'm from Brazil, but I grew up most of...I've been in Canada since I was ten. I've been in Canada for, like, almost 35 years. So I am bilingual. I'm even trilingual.

I speak French, too, but I have to say my Portuguese has degraded in the time that I've been here, even though I speak to my parents in Portuguese, but I lack some of the technical terminology and I even lack some of the slang. So I actually started joining...following people on Instagram for Portuguese language school so that I can up my game to just get back into some of the slang terms and just be a little bit more conversational than I am, because I've lost some of that from not being around that many Portuguese speakers.

EDITH: Yeah, I understand that. I have been here speaking English not too long time, but I already start to forgetting how to write things in Spanish, and I brought it wrong. And my father is always correcting me asterisk.

ADRIANA: I know my dad's always correcting me as well, because sometimes I'll do a translation...what seems to be a direct translation of the English word to Portuguese, and he's like, yeah, that's not the same word. It means something totally different. I'm like, oh, my God, I feel so embarrassed.

EDITH: You are not alone.

ADRIANA: But then I remember something that I've read, like, being able to speak more than one language and making the effort to converse in more than one language is putting yourself out there. It's a sign of bravery, because, holy crap, it is so scary to attempt to communicate it in a language that you're not necessarily familiar with or super comfortable speaking in. Before we met today to record this, I recorded a podcast episode in Portuguese, and it was my second time recording a podcast episode in Portuguese. And I was so scared because I'm like, I don't know technical terminology in Portuguese. And so some of the advice that I got from a few of my Brazilian friends who live here in Toronto, they're like, "Don't worry if you don't know the word. Just use the English word, but give it a bit of a Portuguese accent." Yeah. I mean, like, you know, even though, like, something like that completely scared the shit out of me. At the same time, I'm like, you know what? I'm going to force myself to do this because the more I do it, the more comfortable I will get.

EDITH: Yes. I don't know why we are like that. I mean, we are really afraid. We jump and we start to doing. Then it pass and we said we did it. Yeah. Before that start to feel like the fear, the hands start to with everything, that scary moment. Then you use go, but then you jump to another thing.

EDITH: To start to jump to a ring and another ring. The same motions.

ADRIANA: Exactly. It actually reminds me of, like, I was having this conversation last week with someone where I'm like, oh, my God. When I first learned about cloud and cloud native, I'm like, it's this terrifying, scary thing. So I was like, I don't want to do it. I don't know. I don't think I can do it. And then I did my first thing in the cloud and I'm like, oh, okay. It was okay.

ADRIANA: Yeah, it wasn't scary.

EDITH: You are complete. Nothing happened. It's weird how we can be afraid of things that also involve human beings, like communications, like speaking, we are afraid. I don't know what we are afraid. What is the fear that we feel to be exposed, to see that others look at us and we are trying to embarrass. I think we all are humans and we all have the mistakes.

ADRIANA: Yeah. And I think we judge ourselves a lot more than others judge us. When I'm having a conversation with someone in Portuguese, especially like, with my family in Brazil, and thankfully know Google translate to help me when I'm on WhatsApp, but I'm like, oh, my God, they're going to look at me and they're going to make fun of my grammar, whatever, or use the wrong word. But then I also have to remind myself they have better things to do than to nit-pick on your grammar. They have their own lives. Get over yourself. It's not all about you.

EDITH: Yeah.

ADRIANA: Okay, so I want to switch gears again and talk a little bit about your career, like how you got into...and I know you do a lot of work around Kubernetes and containers. What got you in it?

EDITH: Yeah. Okay. I was in the field of tech for almost ten years. I can say I work it as a DevOps, also as a developer for big companies in Peru. For companies where I started from scratch, things. Was really hard. For example, when DevOps was not big tendency. Right now we are starting from scratch. I started from scratch alone.

Trying to start servers, make all that stuff was really hard, but challenge. And after that I decided to quit my job in 2018, I think...2019. Because of healthy problems, emotional problems, healthy problems, back problems, and with family problems, everything like when you have one and everything start to make a big thing. And I decided to take a moment. I take two years. I never thought it will take me too much, but I took two years. Okay. But these two years was really amazing for me. It was amazing because I give me this time to know me better.

Things that I never did in the past. Because I was always running, running, piecing the car. I don't know how to say the accelerator of the car and trying to gas in that life. But then when everything happened, I just. No plan. Nothing for that future, for the future, just that. Just myself, my thoughts and my body. And thinking what made me happy, what will make me happy for the future.

It's how I invest the time in two years. So not just thinking, but also doing. Because I wanted to improve English, I wanted to improve also my technical skills. And I realized that tech made me happy. It's one of the things also make me happy. Okay. I'm also geek.

ADRIANA: I love it.

EDITH: Yeah. Between several things, tech also made me happy. And I start to improve my skills. I start to learning English, which was really challenged for me. Now I can communicate how I want. I think I need to improve, but it's good for me. So I started to apply for jobs after having an internship in Outreachy. Did you hear about Outreachy?

ADRIANA: Yes, yes. I have heard of Outreachy. For folks who have not heard of Outreachy...

EDITH: Yes. Outreachy is a program, open source program. In three months you can have a mentor. It is also paid. So you learn a lot of things because you put your hands in real open source projects. I put my hands in Apache Airflow, where I start to code. I start to make things that I had never thought to do it. It was really amazing. And I wasn't with Oyo, but they give me a pay.

So it was enough to me to survive and to learn English and improve some soft skills and also technical skills. Then I started to apply a job. I set a goal for me, for myself, to apply for an international company where I can speak English. Have that opportunity to speak English. So applied maybe to 200 jobs in two months. I applied the most I can.

ADRIANA: Wow.

EDITH: Sweden, Germany, USA. I send my CVs a lot. So one of the companies was Percona, and after the process and everything, I was hired by Percona and now I'm working as a technology evangelist in Percona, which is an open source company.

ADRIANA: That's so cool. And I have to say, it so resonated with me when you said that as part of your time of really digging into who you are and what you love, that you decided that you love tech. Because I felt like I went through a similar thing in my career as well. I was working at a bank and I had quit my job at the bank to become a professional full time photographer. And I was like, this is it. I'm done. I don't want to work in tech. I want to do photography.

This is my passion. And I did it for a year, and then I came to this moment in my life where I was like, so it's really hard. And if I really want to make this work, I can probably give it another year or two and probably finally start seeing growth. Because at the time, it was like I wasn't really right then I thought, but do I want to invest this extra time to grow my photography business? What do I actually like doing? Then I realized I had more fun tinkering around, like doing my newsletters and tinkering around with my website, and I was using WordPress and I bought this plugin that wasn't working. And I'm like, let's go into the PHP code to see what's wrong. And I'm like, oh, I think I like that more. So I ended up like. I'm like, you know what? I want to go back to tech.

It took a year of me not being in tech to realize that I actually enjoyed tech. So, anyway, yeah, your story so much resonated with me, and I think it's so awesome and so important to take the time in our careers to figure out what makes us happy because, I don't know, we're at work for most of our lives and it better be something that we enjoy, right?

EDITH: Yeah. And it's different and it's unique history. I can say yours, for example, is totally different than mine, but it's very unique. It has the meaning for you, and that is the good thing, the very important thing that maybe nobody's going to understand. But we are going to understand, right?

ADRIANA: Yeah.

EDITH: We are the only one who understand that special moment. Yes.

ADRIANA: It's so true. Very deep thoughts. I love it. So philosophical. So great. The other thing I wanted to ask you about, because how did you get into doing Kubernetes work?

EDITH: Kubernetes in Peru, we started to hear about Docker, for example, we started to see the whale everywhere. What is the doll? And that was the curiosity, the doll with a terminal. The terminal to Docker and containers and all that stuff. The same, I think happened with Kubernetes. In Peru, we started to listen about Kubernetes as a technology, as a standard things, but just listening. So I started to follow. What is this Kubernetes thing that people talk? And I start to follow people on social media, like Liz Rice, for example. The first person, people that I was following was Kelsey [Hightower].

You interview Kelsey. Kelsey, Liz. That's big people there. So I was really fascinated for the keynote that they did. So I started to investigate about KubeCon, and it's how I got the scholarship to go. And once I go there, I see, wow, Kubernetes is the thing. So I started doing some demos at home with Google Cloud because I had free credits. So I start to play because it's what I want to. I love to do, to play with technology.

Do it, destroy it, create it, destroy it. Mac, Linux, Windows, destroy it again. I don't know. But I found it funny. Funny, yes. Funny. Enjoyable? What is the word? Okay.

ADRIANA: Yeah. Fun.

EDITH: Yes.

ADRIANA: That's awesome. It's so cool. And I especially love what you said about creating and destroying. And I think that's honestly some of the most fun stuff about playing with Kubernetes clusters is like, you do a bunch of stuff, you mess it up. Okay, time to start over again.

EDITH: We are not in production, so you can destroy.

ADRIANA: Right, exactly. Yeah, definitely don't do that with your production cluster. So you mentioned playing around with Google Cloud. Have you played around with any other cloud providers?

EDITH: Yes, I had the opportunity to play with Red Hat, with Amazon, with Google Cloud and Azure. Yeah.

ADRIANA: Cool. And which one's your favorite of the ones you've played with?

EDITH: Google is my favorite. I don't know. I feel like interface, the graphical user interface, was more, for me, easy to do it, easy to create, to understand. For me, I feel that in that time, I feel that Amazon has a lot of things. Maybe that I didn't get too much distracted. But anyway, I use in the same time the three cloud providers.

ADRIANA: Cool. That's awesome. So switching gears a bit, I wanted to talk a little bit about some of your community work.

EDITH: Thank you for that question and community. I started in community participating as all of us just going to the events and see people talking and watch. But then I say, okay, there is another weight because you are in a certain level I can say you advance a little bit in your career and you say, okay, there is people who did a lot for you. They give time, they prepare. So you learn. So let's make it something for that too. And it's the mindset of the community, right? Get back this kind of things. So now we started with creating communities.

I say we because it's not just me, we always work with people in communities and we created communities in the city where I was living. There was where I was living lacks of community techs. There is no much communities in tech. So it's where I wanted to start. I'm going to create communities with many people. So Docker was one of the companies that helped me to make it with sponsoring some events. So we start to create events for per year. For example, we celebrate the anniversary of Docker. Like, the 10th anniversary which was a lot of people going to that event and they are learning about the technology and that is one of the work that we are working until now.

I like of that and I feel proud about that because we are doing something small but maybe could be impactful and give this opportunity to people that don't have the opportunity to make in that city without leaving the city. Yeah, this is one of the things that we are doing and the other is CNCF. I love this. So we had this big opportunity also because CNCF sponsor it. We have all the support of CNCF to make it possible a Kubernetes Community Days in my country in Peru. So we as a team because we are several people working in that we are creating this community for this year, for July. So I hope we can see it and we can repeat it over the year. So this will be impact also and generate more opportunities for people in our country.

ADRIANA: That's amazing. Now how much work goes into putting together a Kubernetes Community Day> But actually before I get you to answer that, maybe it would be helpful to explain to our audience what is a Kubernetes Community Day? What's the purpose of having something like that?

EDITH: Yeah, these are spaces where we give people the opportunity to share about the expertise they have about the Kubernetes and the CNCF ecosystem that exists. So a Kubernetes community days is an event. Could be in person, online or both, two days or one day. We choose that. And where several experts or people who want to share about ecosystem of Kubernetes go and start to talk about that. Could be not just talk, could be workshop, could be several things lightning talks, open forum, things like that. And sometimes it's free, sometimes it requires some payment. It depends on the organization, but it's a big opportunity to join a lot of experts, beginners, enthusiasts, members of communities between all this ecosystem. Kubernetes ecosystem.

ADRIANA: That's amazing. So it's basically like a little mini conference.

EDITH: Yeah.

ADRIANA: It mini though? It sounds like. It sounds like a lot of work.

EDITH: We compare it with KubeCon, could be mini, but to be honest, it's not like to be mini. Not mini like I saw 500 people in some of the Kubernetes Community Days in Europe, I think.

ADRIANA: Holy cow. Damn.

EDITH: We are targeting in Peru for the Kubernetes Community Days in Peru, we are targeting also 500 people. Yeah. Attendees.

ADRIANA: Amazing. That's so cool. And so for organizing Kubernetes Community Day or KCD, what type of support do you get from the CNCF? As a CNCF Ambassador I would imagine that you get a little extra boost of support from the CNCF? So if you could talk a little bit about that?

EDITH: Yeah. What we have is support from members of the CNCF, people who work there. So they help us organize and we have synchronization meetings sometimes to see how is our progress. Also they try to support us the most they can. For example providing us the logos and designer people who can also help us. They also sign a budget for coupons, courses, coupons and some budget. I don't remember the amount of the budget to start the event. That will help us to pay some things and what more? I'm not sure about that but they give the opportunity also to travel to the KubeCon I think.

But maybe I am wrong. I'm not sure about that but I think there is many opportunities. Once you are in the ecosystem and once you are doing things there are many opportunities. Networking is also a big opportunity because in an event you can contact with several people who also are organizing. This is my first time organizing so I don't have precise response how much that will take me because it's the first time that I am running it. Let's see how it goes.

ADRIANA: So does the CNCF provide then the overall funding for running a KCD or do they provide some funding? Do you need sponsorships? How does that work?

EDITH: Yeah, we need a sponsorship. Each team tried to find a sponsorship in the country or outside the country. So with that budget is how they estimate how many attendees we will have and how we are going to assign it. In some cases, this is free and the budget that you need is maybe less, right? It depends, to be honest, of the country and of the city of the country, because the governance community is now is for city. So let's give the opportunity to have more in a country.

ADRIANA: Cool. That's awesome.

EDITH: Did you think to organize an event? Did you think to participate?

ADRIANA: So I'm actually helping to organize an event in Toronto called KubeHuddle, which is like...I think the first KubeHuddle took place in the UK, I want to say a few years ago. And then there was a KubeHuddle in Toronto last year that I attended as a speaker. So then the organizer of KubeHuddle, Marino, he asked me at the end of last one, he's like, "Do you want to help organize the 2024 one? I'm like, okay, yeah." So I am involved in that...because I have so many things on my plate, like, I'm trying to take on what I can without being overwhelmed, but still making sure that I help out. So this is my first experience with that. And KubeHuddle is taking place on May the 7th in Toronto. So this year it's going to be a one-day conference. Last year it was a two-day conference. This year it's a one day single-track conference. So yeah, very exciting. So is KCD Peru? Is it a one-day or two-day conference?

EDITH: One-day conference.

ADRIANA: One day. And is it multiple tracks or is it single track?

EDITH: Multiple. We are thinking multiple.

ADRIANA: Okay, cool. Awesome. Very exciting. I'm super stoked for you. I hope it all goes well. Now we are coming up on time, but before we finish off, do you have any parting words of wisdom for our audience?

EDITH: If I can say something, it's enjoy life.

ADRIANA: I love that. That is perfect.

EDITH: See the sun. Look at that and enjoy it. It's very nice. Sometimes. If you have sun.

ADRIANA: Except on cold days.

EDITH: It's really cold. There is no sun.

ADRIANA: I don't know...What's the temperature like in London today, because here it's a warm -4C.

EDITH: Today there was a sun, but once you put the finger outside, it freezes. But the sun was lining.

ADRIANA: That makes it better. Yesterday it was like -15C in Toronto and I went for a walk and I had to go into different stores to warm up. So I didn't freeze. But yes, I absolutely love your parting words of wisdom. I think we get so caught up in our work lives that we forget to also just take a break, reset, enjoy life. Enjoy the non-work time. Well, this was awesome. Thank you so much, Edith, for geeking out with me today. Y'all don't forget to subscribe and be sure to check the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media. Until next time...

EDITH: Peace out, and geek out.

ADRIANA: Geeking Out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Vilella. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking Out is also produced by my daughter, Hannah Maxwell, who, incidentally designed all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the socials by going to bento.me/geekingout.

E15 ENCORE: The One Where We Geek Out on Being a Tech Journalist with Jennifer Riggins

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Adriana Villela, Hannah Maxwell, Jennifer Riggins) — Tue, 5 Nov 2024 05:00:00 +0000

About our guest:

Jennifer Riggins is a culture side of tech storyteller, journalist, writer, and event and podcast host, helping to share the stories where culture and technology collide and to translate the impact of the tech we are building. She has been a working writer since 2003, and is currently based in London.

Find our guest on:

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show Links:

Additional Links:

Transcript:

ADRIANA: Hey, y'all, welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery. DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host Adriana Villela. Coming to you from Toronto, Canada, and geeking out with me today is Jennifer Riggins. Welcome, Jennifer.

JENNIFER: Hi, thank you so much for having me on.

ADRIANA: I'm super excited to have you join me. And where are you calling from today?

JENNIFER: London.

ADRIANA: Awesome. What I'll do is we'll start with some lightning round questions and then I'll get you to talk a little bit about yourself and then we'll go from there. Sound good?

JENNIFER: Great, yeah, sure.

ADRIANA: All right, let's do this. Okay, first question. Are you a lefty or a righty?

JENNIFER: Righty.

ADRIANA: All right, do you prefer iPhone or Android?

JENNIFER: iPhone. Just because it's what I have and it's seamless. It's not a moral choice, but it's a convenience choice.

ADRIANA: That's fair. Next question. Do you prefer Mac, Linux or Windows?

JENNIFER: Mac. Same. Convenience.

ADRIANA: Convenience is always very important. Okay, next question. As a tech journalist, do you lean towards Dev or Ops?

JENNIFER: Oh, Dev. Well, no, that's hard. No, I would say either side. Yeah, because Platform Engineering is all about bridging that gap, isn't it?

ADRIANA: Yeah, that's very true. Exactly. Okay, next question. Do you prefer to consume content through video or text?

JENNIFER: Text for sure. Or audio more than anything. Podcast.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I love me a good podcast. I have like way too many in my queue that I have to get through. Okay, final question. What is your superpower?

JENNIFER: Connecting people, introducing different people that can help people figure out their next step or their next job or people should just know. People. Yeah.

ADRIANA: Awesome. I love that. I think it's so important. I think people really underestimate the power of connection. All right, so we are on to the main event, the meaty bits, if you will. So why don't you share with our audience what you do with TheNewStack?

JENNIFER: Okay. I have been a working writer since uni. I am not a trained journalist. I went for political science and I've been in the tech niche for 12 or 13 years. That includes both the marketing side and journalism side. I'm just a naturally good writer and good at explaining complex topics so that everyone understands, which is good because I'm geek by association, I am nerdy by nature, but I am not technical. So it helps me then help other people understand because everyone should be involved in understanding the future and how it's being built, especially as it gets more pervasive in our bodies. In our homes and our cars and then AI thinking for our behalf, on our behalf, et cetera.

JENNIFER: And I have been writing for various as a freelancer, but with The New Stack for over eight years now, so pretty much their first year. And also I write for LeadDev and other blogs and then have software customers, things like that, helping them do their case studies or explain. I am not interested in funding, not interested in who's appointed CEO, not interested in crypto, not interested in technology precisely. I'm much more interested in the cultural impact of technology and what it's done. So I won't typically write about a new feature unless something extraordinary is about it. But I will write about once that feature is used and how it impacts people's lives, or more feature-driven like thought leadership, things like that.

ADRIANA: Cool. That's awesome. So you mentioned that in university you did not come from a journalism background. So how did you find yourself writing for a living? Like you said, it came naturally. What gave you the first opportunity?

JENNIFER: I've always been a natural writer, but I'm good at writing in that side. "Soy de letras," as you would say in Spanish. Math is how you would say it in English. And I was actually editor of my school newspaper and all, at university, so I was always involved in some way in writing and in helping other people write better things like that. So it's just a natural thing for me. I've always been able to fall back on writing.

ADRIANA: And then how did you find yourself, like writing about technology then?

JENNIFER: What else is there to write about? I think role was through Elance, or whatever it's called now. One of those Upwork, one of those freelance websites, and from there it spiraled. Something I'm good at explaining complicated concepts.

ADRIANA: I think there's not enough emphasis on really being able to distill things in a very approachable manner, right? Especially a lot of docs out there, technical docs are so.

JENNIFER: Complicated and incomplete at the same time.

I think it's the most important thing. Critical thinking and being able to talk across that chasm or chasm between technology and business will be the greatest skill set and is so important, especially in this time of AI, because you need to be able to distinguish the bullshit that the AI we know is giving what, 52% of code generated by Chat GPT is wrong, but Chat GPT is very convincing because it was trained by tech bros, which have great sense of confidence and to sell bullshit. So it doesn't have to tell you when it's wrong. So in this time when we're entering AI and all this productivity mentality and everything, we need to be able to understand, be suspicious of what is working or not. And we also need to understand the business impact. So either side of it, whether it's business needing to understand that wildly expensive cost center of engineering and cloud, or engineering being able to explain and feel connected to that business impact and to understand, so everyone's going to have to explain to themselves. And Kelsey Hightower said at Civo Navigate, an event...he said, we have this weird, maybe it's a corporate throwback, where in tech we're like, I have this great idea, but I'm not done my slides yet, I'm not done my PowerPoint presentation yet. We'll wait to talk about it.

But that's not how things work. People are storytellers. People need to be able to have conversations, even if it's expressing yourself in writing. I don't think it's necessarily very inclusive at all that everyone has to speak on stage or speak, but one-on-one conversations is still going to be a very important thing. And being able to write, even in Slack and be concise, so that's not my strong suit because I write very long features and things like that. But being able to express yourself in a way that everyone understands, because especially with AI, as we get into this interstitial age of prompt engineering, the next maybe two years, it's going to be the subject matter experts that are really important. So you won't need necessarily for everything, a coder. But if it's like building management or security in a building, maybe you need someone that actually has experience in that, who can work and partner with the developer to build something that's actually useful in AI.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

JENNIFER: So they need to talk to each other. And the people that may be deciding, especially with a chat bot, customer support and all, may have zero coding capabilities. So you need to be able to talk and communicate with them. And that's where the benefit from AI will come about. And it's honestly where we're going right now.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I think the interesting thing is AI, in a way, keeps us on our toes because you almost have to be smarter than the AI to be able to pick out the bullshit, right? Because the minute you start trusting the AI and what it produces, that's what gets you in trouble, right?

JENNIFER: Absolutely. And it's just different. We forget Chat GPT specifically is a large research project. It's not a tool. You are part of a research project. The tool is when you pay for like a private version of any of the AI tools that are trained on your context, your documentation, your processes. That's where the value comes. So if it's free, you should probably distrust it.

JENNIFER: And also think about how bad that is for the earth.

ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree. Now, on the same vein of Chat GPT, I've heard initiatives from various companies where they want to replace a chunk of their written content with AI-generated content. What are your thoughts around that?

JENNIFER: Okay, so in the world of documentation and things, I think it's very interesting. I think that is...documentation writers are super important, but there's also a lot of companies relying on developers to create docs. And in the 12, 13 years I've been in the industry, I started out a lot in the API space. Number one complaint was that there was not enough documentation. Yes, the number one thing developers don't want to do is write documentation. So having documentation embedded next to the code and somewhat AI-generated I think is very valuable. Human-generated media, things like that. There was a rumor 95% of media will be generated by AI by 2025 and all.

I think we're having a real backlash about that. I know AI can't do what I can do, and I don't use it that much. I don't really use it. But my understanding, when other people use it and all, it's for the low value content. Have a proper conversation with someone to distill from someone that maybe isn't as easily expressing themselves because maybe they've got a very technical mindset. It can't have that conversation and draw out of them the true value of their product and then translate it?

ADRIANA: Yeah.

JENNIFER: Could it be useful if someone wrote an article themselves and then wanted to from that article spew out a bunch of social posts or something? It could probably be very interesting for that. Just very suspicious and controlling. You have to be anyway. But when you go through all of that, I don't feel my job is going to be in trouble. The people whose jobs are going to be in trouble are people whose lives live in Excel. Things that can and should be automated. The point is that we work on real problems. Boring, low level-coding problems will be automated, like repetitions.

Creative work should get more creative, more problem solving. But then the boring stuff, I don't know what I could automate. I'd love to automate. Like invoicing, because I tend to procrastinate that because again, soy des letras. I'm not good at math, but then I don't trust the systems to throw that private information in there.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

JENNIFER: Also, we cannot forget that there's this unbelievable inequality that's being caused by data centers. It is causing a huge environmental impact. In west London alone, affordable housing cannot be built. There can be no new affordable housing in one of the largest cities in the world, one of the alpha cities, because too much power is being taken by data centers.

ADRIANA: Wow.

JENNIFER: To cool them down, et cetera. They're super polluting. Like, it's really bad. Note that I said affordable housing. So rich people who are leaving these plots empty and funneling money, because London's like a huge money laundering area, those are still being built and left empty. But people that truly need homes cannot get homes in west London because, specifically data center power. So I think we need to think about how we're impacting the environment. There's very interesting things going on for FinOps and optimizing your Kubernetes clusters, not getting in this habit of being double the amount of cloud just in case, but having things.

And this is where AI is very interesting too, because AI can be a solution to help. It's always better to have the tool manage it than a human manage that, because if a human is responsible, they're always going to give more, just in case. They'll never give less, but they'll always more. So that's where AI can be a solution or part of the solution. But we should be putting far more pressure on anything we're paying for. We should be putting pressure as a customer that they are putting on data centers that are sustainable.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I think we have to sort of move away from this mentality, as you alluded to earlier, of just more and more and more throw more at it, because it's like infinite resources. First of all, it costs money. If that doesn't deter you, which it should, then think about the environmental impact, which is just absolutely mind blowing.

JENNIFER: And then that leads to another impact that disproportionately negatively affects people from underrepresented groups. Whether it's pollution in Virginia, which has a very underprivileged community, very impoverished community in Virginia that are directly...have hearing problems, have asthma problems, these are all problems. So yeah, I think we need to consider, in everything we do as tech storytellers, we need to consider the implication beyond the stereotypical developer, but we need to help them think about who will most likely be harmed by this and who will be more likely to be excluded or what being near.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I completely agree. When you're writing an article, what inspires you? How do you decide what to write about?

JENNIFER: It's 50/50 now because I've been writing so much about developer productivity and Platform Engineering, and, before DEI, but no one cares in 2023 about DEI. See the numbers. Sadly, diversity, equity, and inclusion is not a priority, so you have to do it surreptitiously, like by who you interview and stuff. Can't just write directly about it. I get reached out to a lot. I also see people's talks or use LinkedIn a lot. So there's all that.

ADRIANA: And then the other thing I want to ask. You said that you do a lot of writing on Platform Engineering. What got you interested in Platform Engineering in the first place?

JENNIFER: Oh, it's really a simplistic thing. I've been writing about and working in the Agile and DevOps space for a really long time. I write about culture side of tech, and like I said, in 2023, I see it in the data, I see it in traffic and all. Tech isn't even trying to pretend they care about diversity, equity and inclusion anymore. But you know what? Look at it while women, and that's probably the most privileged, minority or minoritized group in tech. While women make up about between 22 and 24% of the industry, there were 69% of layoffs. Black startups are not getting funding. I mean, it went from abysmal to 0.0002 abysmal percentage.

ADRIANA: Wow.

JENNIFER: People like Elon Musk and DHH from BaseCamp, they've made it cool publicly to not give a fuck about diversity, equity, inclusion. That means before it was informative...sorry...that means, before it was performative, but now they're not even trying to be performative. So there's that. And there's been a ton of cuts and layoffs. I see those cuts because there's two things. There's the last hired, first fired. So if they only started caring about diversity in the last two years, well, those people are going to be first cut. They also tend to be in roles like DEI, which were cut across the board.

Accessibility cut across the board. Marketing, at least perennially, is cut when there's cutbacks, but tend to be more people from minoritized groups. But on the other hand, what's 2023 been about? A lot about tech layoffs, which means a lot of trying to do more with less. And then on top of that, the code is just getting more and more complex. The cognitive load is more and more extreme. And I think while we...we, not me.

But the tech industry in general, doesn't seem to care about diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility as much anymore, sadly, it does still understand, and I don't know that we can go back to, they've tried to return to office so many times and guess what? People are not happy, they're not productive, they're going to leave. Yes, the hand is more of an employer's market, but is still an employee's market across the board. And there's all these things where companies are realizing what statistics and data and journalism has said for years, that happy workers are more productive. And that doesn't mean massages and ping pong tables or foosball tables. That means actually finding purpose in your work, having visibility, not having even logically, from a nutty corporate standpoint, not having so many distractions and all the meetings blew up. So there's all of that. So there's this push for developer productivity because budgets are tighter, people need to make more money, staff is still bigger than it was a year, maybe two years ago. There was this irresponsible, cannibalistic growth for a while there, and it's kind of a correction, but the code has grown in the meantime too.

The cloud native landscape is obscenely complex. So there's this idea we need to work on developer productivity, which is where Platform Engineering comes in. Instead of being a platform that we've had for... since codes exist. Like Cisco was making platforms back in the '70s. It was, you do this, you control this, which for some security stuff is not a bad idea for role-based access control and all that should not be optional. But the majority of the idea of Platform Engineering is that your customers are your developers and you are building a platform as a product where you are getting feedback from them constantly and you're building just what they need to get better. And then also it comes back to that whole docs problem. What is a huge problem? Who is breaking that developer flow, that getting in the zone is not being able to find things, googling it, going to Stack Overflow, asking a question on Reddit. Instead you've got this...we haven't even mentioned Copilot yet, but I think that for the developer audience has the most potential, because it's in with where 85% of repos are...in GitHub. So it's about them not context-switching as much and meetings actually having value, not having Agile.

And then Covid just led to this multiplication of meetings for meeting. So Abby Bangser from Syntasso has my favorite definition of what Platform Engineering is, which it's almost like a physical platform you're supporting people on that takes care of the not differential but not unimportant work. So with DevOps, we went through this idea that you build, you test, you maintain, you do all of that, all the way to the cloud, all the way to release and all. But cloud is not differential to the average programmer, specifically to their audience, which would tend to be external users or customers. Security, very important, not differential testing. Very important, not differential repetitive work. Now it just should just be automated. So it doesn't matter anyway.

And it's about...Spotify calls it Golden Pathway. I like calling it the Yellow Brick Road because if your developers wander off, they may go in a poppy field and go down a Reddit rabbit hole. But if Dorothy and them had stayed on the Yellow Brick Road, they would have been a lot faster. If Gandalf had given the eagles from the start, the book would have been a lot shorter. So why don't we do that? Guess what? If you had asked what Frodo would like? Oh, that's a new nerdy euphemism I'm coming up with right now, metaphor. But I think it works. Would have been a lot shorter movie, a lot shorter movie series, book series, and probably a lot more people wouldn't have died.

So just ask your developers what is frustrating them and then start there.

ADRIANA: Yeah, exactly. And there are so many things that frustrate developers.

JENNIFER: And [inaudible] and searchability are always at the top of that list. They want to know who does what in a company, which again, comes down to collaboration and knowing people across the business. It's a positive thing to learn.

ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. And there's another one. I think it came about from a question that you asked on one of the socials, which was something around, what are some of the developer frustrations? And I was thinking back to so many jobs where I started off...and onboarding and setting up a new environment on your machine is like the most fucking irritating experience ever. It's like, why do we have to keep doing the same thing over and over and over again? Why don't we have a streamlined process for setting up our dev environments when we start a new job?

JENNIFER: Why would. Yeah, why would you even need to, why is setting up an environment useful for you to be doing? It's not helping the customer, it's not driving value. So Spotify, being like one of know, they created Backstage and outsourced it because they thought it was that important to standardize it in the community, which I like. But by them using Backstage, they got their developer onboarding time, which I believe they count as ten pull requests. Like that is when you consider productive. They went from 110 days to 20 days, pull requests because you just get people up and running. You give them what they need. You wouldn't give them a laptop and have them install Windows or install Linux or install whatever you want on your laptop. Give them the tool.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

JENNIFER: So just do that for all of the cloud because, and then you still give them the option. There will still be your 5% that want to engineer their way around a problem. And that's why you build it with APIs and you let people do their own thing. But maybe you don't need to support their work. They're at their own risk. They're on that poppy field, they're doing their own thing. But you'll support that 95% and that's okay.

ADRIANA: Yeah. I really love your analogy of the Yellow Brick Road, because it really is all about like, these are your guardrails. It's there to protect you from yourself. Because we like to deviate. Sometimes we're not necessarily aware that that's not a great thing to do.

JENNIFER: And you can still deviate. That's why you, as a Platform Engineer have to make something they want to use. And again, it comes all the way back to that tech storytelling, those early wins, the examples. Just the proof of good work is you need to make something they want to use. And then you have your customers who happen to be internal, probably more annoying, but you have a much tighter feedback loop. So you're going to get more direct feedback all the time. It's a good thing. It can just be probably a bit awkward for some people.

Also, there's the problem that Platform Engineers are engineers, so they think they know best, which is not the point. And you just build something that they want to use, make it easy for them to stay on the path. So even the guardrails, I picture that car cannot really go past those guardrails. Follow the lines.

ADRIANA: Yeah, it's like this is the path with some flexibility in mind, but you only have...

JENNIFER: Fall off the cliff, and that is all you.

ADRIANA: I think that's a perfect analogy. I love that. And the final thing that I wanted to touch upon, and you brought it up a few times, and I think it's actually a very important subject, which is DEI, which, as you pointed out, is the conversation around it has changed a lot, but the problem still remains. And it's kind of interesting because...

I've had a number of conversations with people over the years, and after you pointed it out, I'm like, yeah, I guess it's kind of unfashionable to like, oh, let's have the panels of underrepresented groups talking about being underrepresented. Then it's like, well, as you said, we have to do it in a sneaky manner. But I think we do have to call it out for what it is because you go to tech conferences and I was a speaker at Observability Day, the co-located event for KubeCon North America, and there were three of us female speakers for all of Observability Day. And I was like, what the hell?

JENNIFER: Could probably guess two of them just by knowing the handful of females or women that have access to that space and who are doing amazing work. But yeah, we don't need VIP bathrooms at tech events, we need representation. It's the only time we would be very happy to queue at bathrooms. Please, tech events.

But like anything in the. When we're talking about open source, 3% out of what, 20 speakers or something for co-located day, it's actually not a bad percentage for open source because open source around 4% women and non-binary because it's toxic, because it's based on free work, which we do the brunt of anyway.

ADRIANA: So true.

JENNIFER: Women and people of color are far more likely to be doing free voluntary work and they don't have time for it. But then you lose the benefits of public code samples, of working with companies that actually are really big companies, like a Google or a Spotify or Atlassian, all these companies that support a lot of open source or access Amazon Web Services. These are companies that provide a lot of open source. But then if you can't go to these events, you can't work on these projects because you can't do free work. Open source is a huge problem. So it's always going to be worse. Which open source should I believe that open source should be free code, but I don't think believe in free labor, and I think that's a huge problem.

ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely.

JENNIFER: You are a company benefiting from an open source project. You should be investing.

Either find a way to sponsor that project or hire a staffer that contributes to that project as their deal, as their job, and just also focused on both technical and nontechnical contributions. Because again, we're back to documentation, we're back to the other big barrier to entry in open source diversity is that everything's in English. So you need people translate. Another use case that in probably 18 months will be very valuable from AI.

ADRIANA: Yes, we take it for granted that we're English speakers, so we're like, yeah, of course, no problem. But I do remember, I think it was someone at KubeCon who was saying that they felt so shy about contributing to stuff because English wasn't their native language and they know incredibly smart, but they just didn't feel confident contributing to open source. And it just. Oh, my God.

JENNIFER: Even in other languages, you need to know English too, to be a translator because it's the de facto language to translate to. But for example, Kubernetes, which Divya Mohan runs with someone else. I forget their name, sorry, but has organized for years the documentation translation, and it's across like 18 languages, or will be soon. Zero are in Africa. Are African languages zero?

ADRIANA: Oh, wow.

JENNIFER: Only about 2%, maybe 3%, depending on what you see of open source contributors and users are from Africa, which is about 19% of the world population and likely the geographic area that would most benefit from free and open and secure software, because typically open source is also more secure, more eyeballs, more people involved, et cetera. So it would benefit everyone, like, at an exponential GDP level, but because it's just in English...

ADRIANA: Yeah. And it occurs to me also that even our programming languages...the syntax is in English!

JENNIFER: And doesn't seem like that's going to change. Yeah, no, that is where AI, I think, will be interesting.

ADRIANA: Yeah, it'll be definitely very interesting to see where it goes. Now, as we wrap things up, do you have any final thoughts on where you see this industry, our tech industry, going in the next, say, year?

JENNIFER: That's it. It's a year, year and a half tops, because we're in this transition period where AI is still nascent, but it will very quickly advance and it will be much more useful because it will be context-specific, and I hope it won't be companies like...Telephonica in Spain fired, like, a huge chunk of its customer support reps because it's like, we can just use a chat AI. It's not great. I'm an HSBC customer, and I'm always like, give me human, give me human.

ADRIANA: Yes.

JENNIFER: It's not working. The Moby whatever, the chat bot thing, they. It's. It's not for me. I know a lot of people would rather talk to a bot, definitely, than stay on hold, but it's just not there yet. So we need humans in the loop now more than ever who have that subject matter expertise. We're not there yet, but we then need real humans in the loop feeding back into the AI, whatever it is, explaining to it, because people are still really nascent. But that's also part of the problem.

A lot of companies...this was in my Spanish class. If I started taking Spanish class for the first time, at the YMCA. And that was our topic, Chat GPT. And I'm like, no, I don't use it. Other people are like, "Yeah, I use it for this and this." But then the Spanish teacher who's quite...kind of identifies as a Luddite, he says he pays for Chat GPT because then he gets the license, then he gets the right to his own content that he could one day sell. And I was like, "I didn't think about that." I thought about it more because a lot of companies don't have generative AI policies yet, which is ridiculous.

Look what happened to Samsung. We're recording this in early December, I think in September, a coder didn't think about it and checked like a whole code base live in the public, free Chat GPT feeding like a bunch of private information in. And now Samsung's like, no more, no more generative AI, we're done.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

JENNIFER: [inaudible] behind, instead of every company needs like law firms. People are using it for stuff at consultancies. But if you don't tell people, like, do not put public information in here, do not put IP in here, or just pay the $20 a month for Chat GPT. I think it's five a month for Copilot and it's just a much better experience anyway. So pay for your tools and advise people how to use them. So I think just super important because I just think it's clear that AI is just going to be a part of our lives.

ADRIANA: It is, yeah. And we have to be more mindful of how we're integrating it in our lives.

JENNIFER: Because what is it? Copilot went GA early June [2023]. It's early December now...maybe mid June. By the time of the Octoverse Report, which I think was early November, late October, 92% of developers in the US were using generative AI.

ADRIANA: Damn.

JENNIFER: We're testing out. Like you can't take this away. They are finding value from, yeah, you can't take this away anymore, but you really have to have a policy. And it's shocking how few do in California or GDPR in Europe. I'm shocked we haven't had a big problem. I'm shocked it hasn't been big yet.

ADRIANA: Yeah, it's been sort of...as companies realize that it's important, they'll implement it into their policies, but there's like, no...

JENNIFER: [inaudible] And putting really wild stuff. I have someone I know in the journalist space who is much more technologically advanced than I am and not a native English speaker. So they had put a very nascent new technology...had written like a really deep dive article, evaluating it, explaining tutorial. They had thrown it into public Chat GPT to clean it up. Then they delivered the client. Three weeks later, their exact article showed up on one of those clickbait sites.

ADRIANA: Oh my God.

JENNIFER: They can't contact an editor, because...they can't contact a human being, because it's a fake human being, because it's like a clickbait site. But that site had found that this new technology was trending and they trained that site in it. They trained Chat GPT in it. And then it just took out their article.

ADRIANA: Damn.

JENNIFER: Don't put stuff that's not published or public in a public AI, whether Bard, it's Bing, whether it's Chat GPT, you don't know what's going to happen. Pay for it. If you want to play around with it, maybe. But even playing for fun, it still has an environmental impact that no one seems to care about.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I'm so glad that you're bringing that up, because the more we talk about it, I hope the more it gets into people's brains that we cannot take for granted the things that we use. I mean, even Google, right? The fact that you're googling stuff, I mean, there are servers running things somewhere.

JENNIFER: Google tends towards green energy more than the largest one, AWS. Leslie Miley, who was speaking as himself, but does work at Microsoft, at QCon, gave this wonderful in his keynote, just a really impactful talk. And he analogized the growth in AI to the US and maybe one of the world's largest infrastructure projects, which was the interstate road system, which specifically created red lines, which specifically was like, strategically kept people of color from being able to use buses to enter New York City and work, which still to this day in San Francisco or that area, the Bay Area, where we have all this, I assume is the most inequitable place in the world, where kids are three times more likely to have asthma, severe asthma, by six years old because of where these roads were built. So this idea, and it's happening again with the access to electricity, the access to data, the pollution, the access to clean water, because that's what's used...water is being used to cool data centers and it's happening around the same lines and stuff. It has this ability to create this great inequity and without diverse people and thought on your teams, people aren't considering it. And we know, again, one of those statistics, just like happy developers are more productive ones, more diverse teams are more innovative and profitable, but we've got our masks over our eyes again and not thinking. And that's where we are.

So sorry to end on a bummer of a note, but let's think of the...I'm always back to there's a wonderful, Agile practice called Consequence Scanning from Emily Webber and Sam Brown. And I just recommend just doing a consequence scanning sometimes. Thinking about it's just simple questions like if this scaled, who wouldn't be able to use it? What are the good intentions we weren't thinking about? And what are some negative intentions or consequences that could happen because of this tool? This is one of those things with open source that even more because if you're being truly open source, your code could be used, I don't know, making another Kiwi Farms or another hate site. Hate farm, that's the consequence of open source. You need to think early on, "Okay, what if someone used this for evil?"

ADRIANA: Yeah.

JENNIFER: Negative consequences or what are the environmental consequences?

ADRIANA: Absolutely. And I think that's really great food for thought. And I hope folks who are listening to this really take this to heart. And next time they use a tool like Chat GPT, they think about the environmental impact or even when they're using resources on the cloud, think about these things because it's so important and we've only got the one planet and time is ticking.

JENNIFER: And don't trust the news. Like, these jobs like mine as a tech storyteller are not going away. We need more people. We need more people explaining in different ways, in different languages and different jargon so everyone understands what is being built and why and what the consequences are. Because a lot of people are just using.

ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Jennifer, for geeking out with me today. Y'all don't forget to subscribe and be sure to check the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media. Until next time...

JENNIFER: Peace out and geek out, y'all.

ADRIANA: Geeking Out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Vilella. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking Out is also produced by my daughter, Hannah Maxwell, who incidentally designed all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the socials by going to bento.me/geekingout.

E14 ENCORE: The One Where We Geek Out on Observability with Charity Majors

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Adriana Villela, Hannah Maxwell, Charity Majors) — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 04:00:00 +0000

About our guest:

Charity is an ops engineer and accidental startup founder at honeycomb.io. Before this she worked at Parse, Facebook, and Linden Lab on infrastructure and developer tools, and always seemed to wind up running the databases. She is the co-author of O'Reilly's Database Reliability Engineering and Observability Engineering, and loves free speech, free software, and single malt scotch.

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All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

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Transcript:

ADRIANA: Hey, y'all, welcome to Geeking Out. The podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery. DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And geeking out with me today...I am so excited to have Charity Majors of Honeycomb on! Welcome, Charity.

CHARITY: Yay! Thank you for having me, Adriana.

ADRIANA: I'm so excited. And where are you calling in from today, Charity?

CHARITY: San Francisco. I just got home. I was in Charlottesville, Virginia, with my little sister over Christmas, and so I am newly home again, looking forward to a very quiet week between Christmas and New Year's.

ADRIANA: That is always the best week for chillaxing, right?

CHARITY: Nothing going on. This is why at honeycomb, we just give everyone the week off. Obviously, some people have to be on call, but why pretend you're getting stuff done if you aren't?

ADRIANA: I know, right? Yeah, I fully support that. I totally agree. I think more companies should embrace that.

CHARITY: Yeah. I don't feel like anyone should have to be performing that they're excited to be at work or like, we don't make people have a set number of vacation days or anything, but...That's the worst. If you're like, well, it wouldn't really be working, but do I spend one of my precious vacation days? Yeah, fuck it.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I agree. Honestly, I get so much anxiety over vacation days, like, having to meticulously plan them and, like, oh, where do I spend them? And maximize vacation with family and school holidays. And there's, like, so many school holidays, right?

CHARITY: Seriously, there's no perfect system. Like, if you do the unlimited holiday thing, people are like, well, but then you're not treating it like real comp. And people have stress about, are they hitting the right number of days or not? And people won't take it. But then if you have specific number of vacation days, then it's where do I spend it? And everything. So I guess if there's one thing that being a CEO CTO of a company has taught me, it's that people are going to complain no matter what. All you can try and do is pick what is genuinely best for your people that will really help you get as much work as possible done without asking people to fake it and do a bunch of. So, we've gone the infinite vacation route, because, all things considered, I think you kind of want to have a mandatory minimum. Like, you have to take two weeks off, right?

ADRIANA: Yeah.

CHARITY: And above and beyond that, it's like, are you getting your work done here? It's a standard. The company standard is about three weeks a year, but nobody's looking over your shoulder and policing you.

ADRIANA: Yeah. See, I appreciate those policies, especially at companies where they fully respect autonomy, because there's the companies where it's like, well, it's unlimited, but we really only expect you to take like three weeks or four weeks or whatever, and it's like, so it's not really unlimited. Right. And that's disingenuous and annoying and very stressful. I don't know. I bust my ass and I need the time to chill.

CHARITY: Yeah. But I will say some people will start taking five weeks, six weeks. But then the question that you have to ask them is, you're taking too much time. It's like, well, are you really getting your job done? And what's the impact on the people around you? Really?

ADRIANA: Yes.

CHARITY: Because, yeah, it isn't actually fair if you take eight weeks off. Anyone would understand if you have a health issue or if someone in your family is. We've had those situations. But if you're working at a startup with some intensity, we have VC money that's burning in the bank. You kind of can't get your job done, really, if you're not there for two months out of the year.

ADRIANA: Oh, yeah.

CHARITY: I think always trying to steer it back to the impact. Right. Can you get your job done and are you letting down the people around you, or are you being a real functional member of a high performing team? Those are the terms to have this debate on not how many days you're here or not. The other thing, unlimited time, is that it removes the aspect of scorekeeping and time keeping and quibbling about hours, because some people don't really care, but some people get really concerned about, well, am I taking 2 hours off here and 3 hours there? If I take 4 hours of that a day or not? And those are brain cells that I would really rather you just devote to solving the problems that we're paying you to solve, not to bookkeeping around your own anxiety or your projected expectation of someone else's anxiety about the hours that you're spending on your job.

ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. I have to admit, the timekeeping stuff is so stressful, and I've been lucky the last three years. I have not had to fill out any timesheets, which has been like, oh, my God, my first job out of college was, like, consulting. So all of your fucking hours are accounted for.

CHARITY: Oh...

ADRIANA: So everything and even your downtime, right? If you're in between projects, you got to charge it to internal thing. And it was like, yeah, I lasted four years.

CHARITY: Oh, honey. I don't know how! One of our company values is we hire adults. And I actually think about that. It's as much about us as it is about the people we hire. It's like, are we treating people like adults? Do we expect them to manage their own time or not? And of course, the difficult points come. I think as an industry, we're just terrible at figuring out how to really take people on as apprentices and turn them into fully-fledged employees. I mean, there's that middle section that takes, even for a fresh college grad or someone entering...It takes five to seven years, I think, for you, really, to bring someone on and bring them up to a level of senior engineer and teach them all these things.

But you can interpret it, our value as you're on your own. You better come fully baked because we're not going to help you, which is not what we're trying to project or do. But it's challenging, no?

ADRIANA: Yeah. It's so challenging, like coming out of school, right? Trying to figure out where you fit in. And it's also kind of, for me, it was like a bit of a mind fuck because I was like the goody goody. Like, I will do all the assignments. And marks were everything. And then you go out into the real world and it's like, yeah, bye bye. That did not apply. For me, it was a massive adjustment and I kind of sucked fresh out of school, like my first couple of years in the work world trying to figure out, what do I do? What do I do? There's like, no marks. Not in the standard sense, right?

CHARITY: No, of course not. You must be an upholder type. Do you get a lot of satisfaction out of checklists? Like your own checklists and the checklists that people do?

ADRIANA: I do, I do. My own checklist. My whiteboard next to me. It's mostly clean now because of the holidays, but it had my to-dos...but I've had to learn to roll with it. I had to be a lot less uptight than I was in school, because I think you just have to, in the work world.

CHARITY: Well, because you learn eventually that if you want to be successful, it's not actually about checklists, it's about figuring out what matters to you and what matters to other people and then figuring out how to creatively achieve those goals. And the checklists are there as a tool, right? I'm not telling you anything you don't know.

ADRIANA: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I completely agree. And I think that's a lesson that comes so much more easily for some than others for sure. Especially. I've hired a couple of interns in my past life and trying to steer them in the direction of, like, chill. Let's relax. Let's just focus on getting the work done and learning cool shit.

CHARITY: In a lot of ways, though, I would argue that the upholder is the easiest type of person to onboard because they're motivated by everything.

ADRIANA: True.

CHARITY: So when I use the term upholder, I don't know if you've read the book, "The Four Tendencies"? It's this book that it's super cheesy and I don't want to get anybody's expectations up, but it was actually really pivotal for me and Christine [CEO of Honeycomb] and finding a way through our relationship because she's an upholder. I'm the opposite. I'm a rebel. Which means that I reject all of your checklists and my own too, called checklist. Basically, it's about motivation. And there's only four possible types.

It's a two by two, right? It's like your own motivation, like what motivates you and the goals that you set for yourself and then the goals that other people have for you. And you can either be super motivated by both or you can be what's called a questioner type, which you can't really give a fuck about other people's expectations. But if you care about something, then you can hit that goal every time. And then there's the type that needs a gym buddy because you struggle to do the things that you set for yourself, but you respond really well to external structure. And then there's the type that rejects all of the structures. And that's my type. And this was really helpful to us in just like, sort of because Christine and me are just such polar opposites that she was just like, who the fuck are you? How does your brain work? Why is it that I give you this perfectly formed challenge and you're like, "Fuck all your challenges." And I'm just like, "Why are you telling me what the fuck to do? Don't you know that's the easiest way to demotivate me, is to tell me what to do?"

And so it was really helpful because this book actually has these almost, like, examples of, if you're this type in a relationship with this type, here are some conflicts and conversations that you might have if you're in a working relationship and you're this type paired with this type. And it was just like, oh, my God. Some conversations that I had had with my partner, like almost word for word, some conflicts Christine and I had had, almost word for word. It was just like, here are some tools for getting around them. So I really like it.

ADRIANA: That is so helpful. It's funny, because I think the way you describe yourself is how I would describe my daughter, too, to a certain extent, because when she was in preschool, her teacher could not teach her, and she realized that the way to teach her was not to teach her, but to teach her friends. And then it would cause Hannah to go over, oh, that looks interesting. So she's like, don't tell me what the fuck to do. I'm from Brazil. And I'm like, oh, it'd be so cool if you learned Portuguese. She's like, "No." What did she do? She learned German.

CHARITY: That is how you deal with rebels. You have to rely on them to find their own intrinsic motivation, because if it becomes part of their identity and part of who they say that they are, then you can't stop them.

ADRIANA: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I'm like, you know what? You do you. I embrace that. And I think she's happier for it. I'm happier for it.

CHARITY: Everyone should be happier for it. As a manager, part of what you have to do is, I feel like, as a manager, in the beginning, we try to give our reports the experience that we wish we had had. For upholders and for...I can never remember...the obligers. Obligers are the ones that need the external structure. You're really giving them a gift. If you give them a structure or if you give them regular check ins and you let them know what the expectations are, you're giving them a huge gift, and they will rise to the occasion and they'll thank you for it. And if you do that for rebels or questioners, you're insulting them.

That sort of versatility. And it's not just managers, of course. It's anyone who's, like, in a senior plus position, where what you need to do depends a lot in influencing others. Just sort of having a mental map of how other people respond to sort of motivations is super helpful.

ADRIANA: Yeah. I actually remember reading one of your blog posts on, like, I think you're talking, like, being manager and trying to make everybody happy, but it's not also about being their buddy and making everybody happy, but also, you do have company goals to fulfill. And so to what extent do you protect your team, but then don't end up doing the things that need to be done, which I think is such a common pitfall for new managers, because for me, certainly when I first got into a management role. I'm like, this happened to me.

ADRIANA: I'm not going to let that happen to my direct reports. I am going to be the best manager that I can possibly be. Right. It can kind of blow up in your face if you're not careful. Like, I wanted to be friends with my direct reports. That did not work out in the long run. Initially, it was like, yaaaay. But afterwards, it was like, no.

CHARITY: We're always overcompensating for our own experience.

ADRIANA: Yeah, exactly. And in the end, I think we learn, right?

CHARITY: Yeah, exactly. Eventually, hopefully, we find a happy medium. I think about that so often when thinking about diversity issues in the industry or about management or that it's natural for there to be like, this is a young industry. This is a very young profession. For as old as some of us feel like we are, we're still like, there's been... When I was coming up, we didn't talk about women in tech. There was a few of us that were just, like, quietly there, wearing men's clothes and just sort of pretending we were straight white dudes. And so there was a lash, right? And then there was a backlash.

And it swings. I'm not going to say too much about how sensitive I think some people are, but I understand why they are. I understand why they are. And also, that's not where we have to end. That can't be where we end up. We have to end up in a place that is less reactionary on all sides.

ADRIANA: Absolutely.

CHARITY: The goal of our businesses and our companies, this is something I've been thinking about a lot. The few times that I feel like the honeycomb culture has gone off the rails a little bit, is when we've kind of lost sight of the fact that we are here to serve our customers. We are not here to have the most diverse company in the world. We're not here to give people the best work life balance. We aren't even here to give everyone the best employment experience of their lives, which early in our, when it seems for so many years like we were going to fail, Christine and I would console each other. We'd be, you know, if we go under tomorrow, as we think we probably will, at least I think we've done a good job of giving a lot of people an experience that will set the know so they won't accept shitty jobs for the rest of their life. But now that we're hoping to be around for a long time, we can't forget that we are here to serve our customers. The decisions that we happen to think that a lot of these things go in harmony.

Treating people really well means we treat our customers well. Having people who are happy at work. We believe in having healthy businesses, which is a lot of people's complaints. They see symptoms, but what they'reacting to is the fact that the business is not healthy. The way people are relating to each other is not healthy. I wrote this other blog post a while ago, I don't know if you saw it about, "Choose Boring Culture"?

ADRIANA: That sounds vaguely familiar.

CHARITY: You know, because Dan McKinley wrote that blog post that was hugely influential on me about choose boring technology where he's like, you know, as a startup you get three innovation tokens. Choose wisely. And I feel know the same is true for culture and businesses. And like, we stand on the shoulders of...you know, a lot of people, a lot of really smart people have figured out things about how to make companies work well. There's this great book by Pat Lancioni called the Advantage, which I think of as like the James Madison of business and organizational structure. He's incredibly innovative thinker and he makes things very simple. But he's like, the advantage increasingly in corporations is not your widgets. Because everybody's widgets are getting so good. It's how healthy is your organization, which means how much of your people's creativity are you really taking advantage of? How much of their creativity do you feel free to bring to work? Is your organization equipped to absorb it and to change from it and to react to it? Are you able to keep people who are passionate about their work? Do you let people go who are detracting from the culture? And he's like, it is amazing how poorly most organizations are run to this day.

So choose boring culture. I think in a lot of ways, companies don't have to make their companies interesting and fun because people will do that. People have so much fun, creative energy in themselves. You just have to create a boring place for them to work where they can do their best work and they'll come up with all the fun stuff.

ADRIANA: Oh, I love that. That's so cool. You touched upon something that I am a huge proponent of, which is like, letting go of people who are not adding to your corporate culture. Because I think there's this tendency, I think, in our industry to hire rock stars and kind of ignore the shittiness and their personality because, oh my God, they're the best of the best at blah. Right? And I've personally experienced a couple of incidents in my life where if you have somebody who is constantly just being negative on your team, no matter how good the rest of your team is if they're like, poo pooing everything, it sullies the culture. It's like a poison pill. And it's not like, oh, I'm going to fire your ass. It's like, well, perhaps this team might not be the best for what you want to achieve. Perhaps I can help you find a position in another team in the company. Because it's just poison.

CHARITY: I think it starts with not having kid gloves on. I don't think you jump straight to firing. I don't even think you jump straight to moving. A lot of these people have never really been told no in their lives. And some of them can take it, some of them can. But I think you owe it to them to figure it out, right? To start giving feedback consistently and regularly working with the person. And this is something that I think can be really frustrating to people who are. When it looks like management is doing nothing right, because it looks like, I know that people at Honeycomb have felt this way at times, because it looks like they're just kind of being shitty and they get better and then they don't.

And it's always a judgment call. And I would actually agree that we always probably wait a little too long in general, but we waited a little too long with everyone. And I would take that over being a little too fast to fire people, because I think that that even more trust. But, yeah, I agree. If they can't bend, if they can't change, if they can't understand that the smallest unit of software ownership is the team, it's not the person. It doesn't matter how great one person is, because one person can't own software. It's all about, are you contributing to the overall greatness of this team? You can bend your rockstar talents to that, but if you're not willing to, or if you can't, then there's no place here for you. I'm sure you can get paid a lot more money somewhere else.

ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely true. Absolutely.

CHARITY: Sorry, go ahead. I didn't mean to cut you off.

ADRIANA: Oh, no, I was just saying I agree with you, but I think that.

CHARITY: Letting go of people is hard, and I think that it comes in all forms. I think that it's really discouraging to people who are on a high performance, who want to be on a high performing team, when someone isn't really showing up and who consistently isn't showing. The person who's like, consistently taking six weeks of vacation when everyone else is taking three or four, or the person who is kind of half asking it. And all of us half ass it sometimes, right? But people can tell you work on a team for a while, you get a real good sense of how hard everyone is working, how much they're trying. Sometimes it comes in form of, this is almost some of the most heartbreaking ones of when you've got someone who's very junior who just isn't working hard enough. And it's like we kind of don't have the language to tell them that. Because on this pendulum, we're so far over to the side of, you shouldn't be like, work crush code. It's almost like we've kind of lost the ability to tell people, no, really, you're probably not going to make it if you don't put in a few more hours and if you don't have a little bit more grit.

And some people don't want to work that hard, and that's fine, but you aren't automatically granted a job based on however hard you do or don't want to work.

ADRIANA: Yeah. And it's such a tough conversation to have. I had someone in a previous team that I hired on as a senior person, and then she was, like, scamming on my. She was scamming on everyone else. She would just pretend that she was doing work by, like, oh, let me attend meetings with so and so. And meanwhile, I'd hired this junior person who was working like she was working at the senior level. And it was so frustrating. I was trying to have the conversations with the senior person saying, listen, I want to help you. How can we work together? But she got offended. And these conversations are so hard to have because we all perceive differently how we're doing. And in her mind, she was doing just fine. How have you had those conversations in the past with people?

CHARITY: Oh, it's really hard. There's no version of this that isn't hard if you care about people.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

CHARITY: My most recent blog post was about why anyone should go into engineering management. Because it's a hard fucking job. And the answer is, because we need them. Because we need them desperately. Like a team with a great engineering manager builds circles around teams without one. And the other reason in my piece, I said is that it changes you as a person, and it gives you these skills that a lot of us didn't learn when we were growing up about how to be honest and how to have hard conversations and all these things. But as to your question, how do you go into this? The number one thing I think is no review should be a surprise. You should be having this conversation consistently, which is a hard thing to do because it makes people feel demotivated and frustrated.

But sometimes they have to feel that way. We've instituted a rule at honeycomb that if you're thinking of putting someone on a PIP, if you're thinking of, you have to literally say the words, your job is at risk because it's so tempting when you're face to face with someone who you really want to succeed, to soft pedal it or for them to feel upset and for you to kind of walk it back, or for you just to use words that let them walk away thinking something that is not what you want. And there are tools you can use to make sure. You can write up an email afterwards to be like, just to be clear, this is what I saw. This is what I'm saying. This is what you're hearing. But I really do think that one of the most important tools we have is just being explicit because they can file it away. We all have such infinite creativity when it comes to explaining away things that we don't want to hear.

And we can be like, oh, my manager is kind of a bitch. Oh, they're just in a bad mood. Oh, they're just kind of riding me lately. Oh, it's because of this thing. But this will be over. And I feel like if something really isn't trending, well, we have a responsibility to be more of a dick. We have to be the ones who kind of put our bodies in the breach and be like...and just sit there and deal with their reactions, which are going...They're going to have negative feelings. And it's really hard to sit with someone else's negative feelings who you are the proximate cause of. It's really hard, but you have to do it. It is the best thing for them to do it, to let them know this isn't just a small thing. This isn't just a flash in the pan. You are not succeeding. You are not on a path to succeeding here. You are on a path to, your job is at risk. Honestly, that's the kindest thing you can do for someone.

ADRIANA: Yeah, that makes so much sense. And you're right. It's so hard to get those words out. Like, "Your job is at risk." Yeah. And I've worked in organizations, too, where pussyfooting around the topic was like kind of the cultural norm, and so things wouldn't get said that should have been said, and you don't have the favorable outcomes in the end.

CHARITY: Yeah. And then people feel stabbed in the back, understandably. I would, too. They go...walk away going, "If they had just told me, if I had only known." And that is the worst outcome. That is the thing that I always remind myself of when I'm just like, I love this person. I don't want to be mean to them, but I cannot take it if they walk away feeling like I didn't tell them, like I stabbed them in the back by not making it perfectly clear that they're not performing and their job is at risk.

ADRIANA: Yeah, it's definitely something that I wish that I had done more of in the past, and I try to remind myself of it, but, yeah, I think that is absolutely the right thing.

CHARITY: And to your point earlier about being people's friends, you can absolutely be friends with your direct report, but there's a line there. There's a boundary there, and there's a point at which you're not their friend. It's just like being someone's parent, right? When things are going great, yeah, you act like friends, but they have to know that when it's time for you to be parent, you're going to be parent.

ADRIANA: Yeah, exactly. Because otherwise they will take advantage of you.

CHARITY: Right. They will completely take advantage of you. It's human nature.

ADRIANA: Exactly. And you will let your guard down, too, right? Because they're like, oh, "I don't want to hurt so and so's feelings, otherwise they won't love me." And it's like, you kind of have to get over that as a manager. And it's hard.

CHARITY: It's really hard. It's really hard. And it's always a matter of judgment. It's always a judgment call. And you have to know that after you've had that hard conversation, chances are they're going to go tell other teammates a version of it that makes you look bad and them look great. And you can't do fuck all about it. You have to sit there and take it and hope that the relationships and the trust that you have built up are enough that people aren't going to just automatically believe that other person. That is the hardest thing about being a manager to me.

CHARITY: That right there, knowing...is when I know I can't say anything.

ADRIANA: Yeah. And risking, as you said, having people say, well, management doesn't know what they're doing. Oh, my God. Because as an IC in the past, I was like, management clearly doesn't know what they're doing, and then...

CHARITY: Clearly doesn't know shit.

ADRIANA: The first time it happened to me, oh, my God, I want to go cry. Like I'm trying everything to make you happy.

CHARITY: Yeah. This is why I feel like my dream vision for the future of engineering management is that more people do it. But people don't do it. They don't do it as a career. They do it as a tour of duty, because I feel like having ex managers on the team, it's like a game-changer, because whenever the dynamic is ICS versus managers, which always happens. Comes and goes, but it always happens. It's so helpful to have an ex-manager there on the IC side who could go, okay, kids, it might be this. It might be this. It might be this. Do we trust this manager in general? Okay, well, let's not jump to the automatic conclusion that they're just an idiot or they're just, like, being manipulated by the upper or whatever. They're the only voice in the room who can talk people down off a cliff and remind them whether to have some trust. And it's such a game changer. It is so wonderful.

ADRIANA: Yeah, that is so true. And it makes so much sense. I even find myself in positions after I've been a manager, and then being now an IC...whenever I get comments...

CHARITY: It's nice!

ADRIANA: Yeah, it is nice! And sometimes I have my manager apologize, "Oh, I'm so sorry. Blah, blah, blah." I'm like, "Dude, I totally get it." "It's fine. No worries."

CHARITY: You're able to give so much better support and understanding to your manager than you ever could have without that experience.

ADRIANA: Exactly.

CHARITY: It's so grounding and validating for them to have someone who sees them.

ADRIANA: Yeah. And especially, also when you have that nice rapport with your manager where you have that ultimate trust, where, okay, it might seem like they're riding you hard, but then you're like, oh, my ex-manager brain has said, okay, "I have a good reason to trust them. Take a step back. Let's look at the big picture." And, yeah, it's cathartic and it's eye opening.

CHARITY: Everyone wins.

ADRIANA: Yeah, exactly. No, sorry. Go ahead. No, please.

CHARITY: I often hear people who are first-time managers who are, like, anxious or like, if I go back to being an IC, will I ever get the chance again to be a manager? And I'm just like, "Oh, grasshopper, they can smell it on you. You will be fighting off manager opportunities for the rest of your career." Have you found this to be true? I expect you have.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I have. And it was funny because after I read it in one of your blog posts, I was like, oh, yeah, so true.

CHARITY: Yeah.

ADRIANA: I mean, it's on your resume. Yeah.

CHARITY: Just the way you come across. I've also said that the fastest way to mint like, a shiny new staff engineer is to take a senior engineer and put them in management for a couple of years. Because the way you present yourself at work, the way you approach problems, you have such a better sense of the business, even if it wasn't on your resume. This is why some people get to be managers early and often, because for whatever reason, they already have some of those skills. But once you've been a manager, it's written all over your face that you understand.

ADRIANA: Yeah, very true. Now, here's a question for you. What's your take on folks who have gone into management at a really early point in their career, becoming a technical manager for a technical team when they don't have that many years of actual technical experience?

CHARITY: I think they are not well-served by this. I often see this happen to women, especially, and I think it's often intended as a compliment and by people who genuinely are trying to do they want to help the industry. They know that there needs to be more women in leadership and management. And so they're like, here's this person who has social skills and also some engineering skills. So we'll just...I think everyone has the best of intentions, and I think it really does not serve them because it's often a one-way...it's a one way-ticket, right? Because you don't have the skills to be able to go back and pick up coding easily in a couple of years. I think you also don't really have the skills to be a great manager.

Honestly, my recommendation to them would be get back to coding as quickly as you can or climb the ladder. If you choose to climb the ladder, then those skills are less relevant. But I wouldn't be in a rush. If you're 25 and you're a manager getting offered a director position, I would look at that cross-eyed. I would be like, because, yes, it is probably a compliment, but is it the right thing for you? I don't know. I mean, if you play out over the course of your career, you've got a 30, 40 year career. There's no rush. And the people who really excel in those senior leadership positions tend to be ones with deep roots, not just a very shallow.

And there's so much to learn, right? This is not to say that there's not anyone out there who's climbed the ladder in a hurry and not regretted it, because there probably is. But the people that I know who have done it have, by and large, profoundly regretted it. You know, I wrote about my friend Molly, who's an engineer at Honeycomb now, and she was one of those people. She super bright, straight out of college, became an engineer, became a manager, became a director. Shot up. You know she was a VP, she was a director, she was an EP. And she came to Honeycomb to be our head of...VP of customer success or something like that. And she was so unhappy.

And she would make all these wistful comments about how she wished she could be a software engineer. She wished she had done that. Eventually, her husband, he was an early member at Okta and Okta IPOed. And so suddenly she was like, "Wow, I can do anything I want with my life. I want to be a software engineer." And so she became a support engineer for us, and she just started writing code on the side. She started picking up some PRs. Now she's a software engineer on the team, and it's been hard.

She's never been happier, though. And I'm proud that Honeycomb is the kind of place that can support someone in doing that, because I think the opportunities to do something like that are few and far between. There are not many places we'll take a flyer on someone who's middle-aged and wants to go back to software engineering. But if you think of your career as a long game, you don't want to amass a bunch of titles, especially titles that are kind of empty because you're not getting a...I would...I would venture to guess that you're not getting a really high quality offer to be a director or a VP at age 27. It's really mostly the title. You want to amass yourself a solid base of experiences and skills, and you want to have shit to draw on as you climb that ladder so that you can help people better.

So the thing that I do want to guard against when I'm talking about this, I'm speaking to people who are early in their career, who are facing these questions. I don't want to make it sound like it's too late and you're screwed if you're already in this position. In fact, if you're in that position, if you'd like someone to talk it through, reach out to me. I have a Calendly link, calendly.com/charitym/advice, and I'm always happy to talk through interesting and tough career conversations with people. You have skills, you have assets. It might not be a super sexy path, but you can find places that will take advantage of the skills you have to offer while you kind of work your way up from the bottom again, if that's what you want to do. I'm sure you can do it, but it's easier if you do it right the first way and become a solidly senior engineer. Seven years really is the minimum, I think, before you become a manager.

And if you really want to be able to manage other senior engineers, you need to at least be able to speak the language and be able to roll back on it.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I fully agree with you on that. I was thinking back to my own career. My first job out of school was as a consultant at Accenture, and the career path was basically like, you must pay your dues as a developer, and you shall be rewarded with a management position. Right? Yeah. Right. So we're all kind of brainwashed to think, oh, my God, if I'm not a manager, by 27, 28, I have failed at life. Right? And I hit this crossroads in my life where I was being groomed to be a manager. I didn't have the manager title, but they threw me on some engagement where I was managing three teams at once. I was doing a shitty job, and I'm like, I was miserable, and I'm like, what do I want to do with my life? And so I decided...I left consulting. I took on a job as a software engineer. It was a lateral move, but I was so happy, and it was the best thing for me because my thought was, how can I manage these people if I don't know enough? I just didn't feel right for me, so I'm happy I did that.

CHARITY: Good for you for listening to your gut. I think all too often we talk about impostor syndrome, and we try to talk people out of it. I often think if your gut is really eating at you, that something is wrong. You should listen to that. You shouldn't just go, oh, everybody, there's impostor syndrome, and then there's just, like, the feeling in your stomach that you're not really setting your future self up for success or that you aren't really equipped to do the kind of job that you want to be able to do in this role. And I think that is not something to be brushed aside lightly.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I definitely agree. Listen to your gut, because it's telling you something. One thing that I wanted to ask was, when you were building Honeycomb from the ground up, did you have sort of lofty aspirations of how you wanted things to be?

CHARITY: Ha!

ADRIANA: How was...the initial thoughts versus how it turned out?

CHARITY: I 100,000% expected us to fail like the plan was to fail. So I was never one of those kids who was like, I'm going to start a company. Because I always kind of low key hate those people. It's like, "Oh, you're too good to work for someone else." I'm not too good to work for someone else. I was a serial dropout. I'm the opposite of you, right? I didn't collect all the awards. I didn't check anything off.

I dropped out and I dropped out again. I dropped out again. And so I never had a pedigree. Nobody was ever going to give me money. Then I was leaving Facebook, and the first time in my life, I kind of had a pedigree. And so I was like, well, I can't waste, like, on behalf of all women and queers and dropouts everywhere, I have to take it and run with it and do something. But I was super burned out. And I was like, well, I guess I have an idea, but I'll go heads down the corner, write code for a couple of years, and then we'll fail.

And I'll open source it. Then I'll have my tool to use. Hee haw! That was really the grand vision. And I would say Honeycomb has been around for eight years as of January 1, but we had many near-death experiences. Now, we hit our $40 million ARR mark this month, which is exciting. We're hoping to get on a path towards an IPO. But for the first five years, I think we wobbled around between 5 people, 12 people, 30 people. We did layoffs down to 15 people again. We were a skeleton crew wandering in the wilderness. In retrospect, I realized that we were creating a category and we were writing the database and all this stuff, but it just felt brutal. It just felt like failure was around every corner. And most of those corners were right. We did fail most of those corners. There are several just, like, near-death experiences that we had, and we made it through.

And now I, for the first time, am not thinking we're going to fail. But no, there was no grand vision. There was no grand vision at all. There was just, like putting 1 foot in front of the other and feeling like I was failing the people that I loved most almost every single day. It was brutal. I will say, though, that Christine and I, a little bit older than your average tech founders, especially me, and turns out we have very strong opinions. And we learned a lot of lessons at previous startups. We were at, like, at Parse, which I loved working at Parse.

Parse is where I learned about the importance of design, about marketing. People loved that product and I loved working on it. Before Parse, I was like, I'm just a backend engineer. I don't care what the product's about. I'll work on anything. Parse is where I learned that, of course, that was never true. But Parse never really had a shot because the founders never really tried to build a business. They tried to build a great product, and they did. But then around series B, they had a marketing person and a couple salespeople.

We weren't bringing any revenue. They had to sell. Their destiny got taken out of their hands because they had no other choice. And so Christine and I, from the very beginning were like, we want to build a business. We want to build a business. We want to build a product that people want to pay money for. We're not building freebies. We're going to try and monetize on the other end of the pipe.

We are building a product. We're building a business. And I had a lot of just, like, very strong opinions about the kind of culture we wanted to build, just about how...in the beginning, when we were interviewing engineers, if anyone talked, not even dismissingly, about go to market functions like sales or marketing, even just sort of, like, almost alienated, just like, "Oh, well, that's them. We're us. We don't understand that." Those weren't our engineers, because we don't need to hire engineers who wanted to build a business with us and who weren't going to create that us versus them dynamic that makes all great business people in the valley feel like second-class citizens. So, yeah, I would say we discovered the grand vision along the way. It really wasn't there from the beginning.

ADRIANA: And as a follow-up, you know, one of the things that I admire so much about Honeycomb is you build such a lovely community around your product. Your customers truly, truly love it. And we met because I was asking so many questions in the Honeycomb Pollinators Slack. At the time, I was exploring Honeycomb as a potential product that the company I was working for might switch over to. And everyone was just so genuinely nice in helping me understand this Observability thing that was so nebulous. How do you build that thoughtful community? Was it something that you sought out to do from the get-go? Is it something that organically grew?

CHARITY: If you ask any founder, they'd say they're trying to build that, right? So I think the questions were like, "Why were we more successful than many others?" I think a lot of it has to do with just...and if you had asked me if I would be talking about values and shit, like a year ago or a few years ago, I'd be, like, rolling my eyes, because I've always hated when people are like, "Values," because most businesses are just like. I don't know. I get really cynical about it, but I feel like we are our customers, and our customers are us. We built this product to solve a real problem that we are having. And it is more important to us that these problems get solved than that Honeycomb is successful. I think I can say that about everyone there.

We would love to be successful. We'd love to make lots of money and all this stuff. But we see the pain that so many teams are in, and we know that we have a way to fix a lot of that pain, because we've seen our customers do this over and over, and we hear what they say about how no one else could do this. And we had the advantage of designing and building this 25 years after metrics began dominating the landscape. So we build on the shoulders of giants, like I said earlier. So I feel like it's easy to be a true believer, because we're not just trying to sell something. We're really building something that really changes people's lives. And it's easy to get starry-eyed about that.

It's easy to be a believer when you're all on the same page about fixing problems, not just about trying to tweak your messaging or your marketing or your sales or something. I think people, Honeycomb, are generally very passionate about solving the problem, and it's very exciting to see them. I mean, the product does what it says on the sticker, which is very exciting, because almost no products do. Most products are hyped. If anything, Honeycomb is underhyped. It does so much more than we've been able to explain to people, which is why our churn is like nothing. We win, like, 80% of our tech evals, which the industry standard is, like 30 or 35%. Once people see it on their data, you cannot pry it out of their cold, dead hands.

One of our best sources of leads is when engineers change jobs and they bring us with them, because once they've tried developing with Honeycomb, they can't go back to not having honeycomb. And this is all stuff that it's hard to explain to people in words, but once they see it, it clicks. And so, really, our core challenge, over the next year, we've built the product. Our core challenge is figure out how to get more people to click with it faster, because we know that once they've seen it. The deal is done, but it's still a very hard problem.

ADRIANA: Yeah. The other thing that I think is very interesting about Honeycomb is it's not only are you building a product that people are excited about, but you've also really turned the whole area of Observability on its head. I'd like to think that it was Honeycomb that sort of gave Observability...Observability became what it is because of what Honeycomb has done. I mean, you've spent a lot of time talking about Observability. I mean, honestly, that's how I got dialed into what Observability was in the first place, was catching your Tweets. Yeah, if you could say a little bit more about that.

CHARITY: Yeah. Like, Christine and I are not marketing people. It turns out what we were doing was category creation. All I knew was that we were trying to build something based on an experience we had had that had changed us as engineers, and we knew that it wasn't monitoring. And I spent months just sort of, like, testing language, trying various things. And one point, it was July in 2016 that I Googled the term "Observability", and I read the control theory definition, and I was like, "Oh, shit. This is what we're trying to do. We're trying to build something to let engineers understand the inner workings of a system, no matter what's happening, just by observing its outputs."

So, like, working backwards from that, what do you need? Like, you need the high cardinality, you need the high dimensionality and all this stuff. And I feel like that definition really took hold for about three years. In 2019, 2020, maybe 2021, all of the money started rushing into the space, and suddenly, anyone who was doing anything with telemetry was like, cool. We do Observability, too, which, on the one hand, is like, it's a good problem to have. It means that what we were talking about really resonates with people. And at the time, I was naïve enough to think that, oh, well, they're co-opting our marketing language, but surely they're building the same technology under the hood. It's just a matter of time until they release it. I don't believe that anymore.

I think all they did was steal the marketing language, and I don't think they actually have any plans to. I think that, like, Datadog in particular, their business model is centered around having all these different SKUs, right? A different product for metrics, for logs, for tracing, for profiling, for security, and they've got too much money invested in. The problem is that the experience degrades for everyone if nothing connects all these data sources. People are paying to store their data again and again and again and again, but nothing connects it except the engineer who's sitting in the middle just trying to visualize or visually correlate. If that spike is the same as that one, it's fucking broken. My hope is that there will be new startups that are entering the space. So I've kind of given up like, okay, Observability now means, and this makes sense, I'm actually completely on board.

Observability, instead of having a strict technical falsifiable definition, Observability is a property of systems, right? A system can be more less observable if you add some metrics, great, you're more observable. But what we're seeing in the field is that there's a real huge step function difference between, let's call it Observability 1.0, which is about metrics, three pillars, right? And Observability 2.0, which is based on this single source of truth. And it's not just the technology, because o11y 1.0 is very much about MTDR, MTTD reliability, uptime. It's a checkmark before you send your code to production to make sure that it's observable. And Observability 2.0 is about, it's the foundation of the software development lifecycle. It defines your velocity, how fast you can ship, how well you can ship, the quality of what you ship, your ability to iterate quickly, your ability to identify what your customers are actually doing and why, and build on that. It's your ability to see what's happening in the wild and make decisions based on real data and then feed them. Because this is all about feedback loops, right? And it's about learning to be a developer where you're developing with fast feedback loops.

And it's like the difference, o11y 1.0 is about, okay, this is something that you tack onto a product...2.0 is about, this is how you build the product, right? So many teams are stuck in 1.0 land and they're happy with the tools that they have, but the teams that are going to win are the ones that not only adopt 2.0 tooling, but also adopt the 2.0 mindset of this is how we build software. It's like putting your glasses on before you drive down the highway. You can drive a lot faster, you can make better decisions much more quickly. So I feel like right now, the big problem that Honeycomb has from a business perspective is that far too few engineering leaders even understand that 2.0 is possible because you can have a 2.0 mindset. But if you've only ever seen 1.0 tools, it's janky. It's real hard to like...you can only do so much, right? You really need to see 2.0 tooling in order to really...

But it clicks so fast when you do. So that's really our job. For a long time, I was really disappointed that there are still Observability startups starting. They come up, ping, pong, like here and there, everywhere, but they're all 1.0 tools. They're still doing the multiple storage places. My hope is, and I get why, it's because you have to build an entirely different storage layer from the ground up. And very few VCs have the patience for you to do that. They want you to get right to product, market fit and all this stuff. Now that there are more columnar storage engines out there like Snowflake, I don't know...

I'm optimistic, but I'm optimistic over the long run, our model of Observability will win. Even if Honeycomb completely fucks up in the end state is the complexity of our systems is increasingly demanding it. The complexity of people's systems is skyrocketing. You look at the DORA metrics, and I was always kind of like, dude, it's so weird. Like high performing teams, okay, that takes an hour to a day to restore service. But for the bottom like 80% of teams, it takes them a day to a week to restore service from an outage. How? It's because they don't have Observability.

It's because they can't actually see what's going on. They rely on a few people's brains, people who've been there for a long time, who pack a lot of context into their heads, who can try and reason about it using the very limited data sources that they have. That's why it takes so long over and over. Part of the reason we win so many of our POCs is because over and over, our sales engineers, we help you roll it out, and they'll be like, is this an outage over here? We're seeing something wrong. And people will be like, what? Ten minutes later they get paged and they're like, oh, it's just like once you have this feedback loop, you get used to being constant conversation with your code instead of just like shipping and waiting for someone to get paged. At some point in the next hour two year, right. It's all about hooking up this feedback eventually, even if it's ten years from now, the model that we're talking about is the shape that's going to win whether it's us or not because our systems simply demand it. There's no other way to build software at that kind of velocity and scale.

ADRIANA: I completely agree and I think having that conversation where Observability is considered...is baked into like...you're shifting left on Observability basically, right? Were it's like...

CHARITY: Exactly.

ADRIANA: No, it's not the thing that's tacked on at the end per usual. It's the thing that your developers are considering in the beginning that your QAs are using to troubleshoot shit and write trace based tests and that now your SREs are like, "Oh, I've got the information to solve the problem!"

CHARITY: So many of the promises of Agile development and all these SREs and all of these cultural movements, they've never really lived up to their full promise. And I feel like the reason is because it's not just a cultural thing. You have to have the tools that actually make hard problems easy as well. And the feedback loops with metrics and logs are just painful and arduous and relies on so much on manual cross-correlation and heroes jumping into the break. But when you have the right tools, you can just glance at it and see the answer. And it's what unlocks the ability of teams to just be constantly...When I think about modern software development, I think about feature flags which help you separate releases from deploy so you can be deploying small changes constantly.

CHARITY: I think about future flags, I think about Observability, just the ability to see what the fuck is going on at any point. I think about testing in production and I think about, well, canarying. There was one other thing that was on my mind. There's really just a four thing and they all reinforce each other, right? One of them alone is okay, but you get all of them together. And it's a completely different profession than it is in software development, which is kind of still from the shrink wrap era. It's like you're building, if your world while you're building software is your IDE and your tests, that's shrink wrap days. Your world should be production and telemetry. You should spend more time in your production windows than in your IDE windows. That's what modern software development is like I think.

ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. And the final point that I wanted to touch upon is you mentioning...having...the data that correlates right? Where you're not just having to figure out how it's stitched together. And tools like open telemetry definitely enable that. But then I guess part of the irony though, is that open telemetry allows you to correlate traces and logs and metrics. But then if your Observability backend doesn't have a way to show that correlation, then you're kind of up a creek too.

CHARITY: So I am so glad that OTel came out when it did so that I think we were able to have a lot of influence on how the data is gathered. You're absolutely right. Part of observability is the presentation of the information. If you don't have the ability to slice and dice, if you don't have the ability to combine, if you don't have that single sort of truth, then you can't really reap the rewards of Observability, even if you captured it. But capturing it the right way is the first step, for sure.

ADRIANA: Yes, absolutely. And so glad that OpenTelemetry has gone officially GA. The specification has gone GA end of 2023. Long time coming. I'm super stoked for that.

CHARITY: It's a big moment in our industry.

ADRIANA: Yeah, and I'm so glad also that so many of the vendors have come together to rally behind it. And it's really not someone trying to flex their muscles over everyone else. It's such a lovely community.

CHARITY: The only lagger is Datadog. People need to keep putting a little bit of shame and pressure on them because they're the only ones who are not playing nice, but everyone else is, which is a tremendous achievement. Huge kudos to Splunk, who's got like 30 engineers working on integrations every day. We would not be where we are without Splunk.

ADRIANA: Yeah, it's so great. It's so great seeing all these innovations, collaborations, and people really genuinely caring for the project.

CHARITY: It's great.

ADRIANA: And on that note, we have come up on time. And thank you so much Charity for coming on geeking out with me today. This was awesome. One item off the podcasting bucket list for me. Always a pleasure to chat with you. And everyone, please don't forget to subscribe, be sure to check out the show notes for additional resources, and connect with us and our guests on social media.

CHARITY: Until next time, peace out and geek out.

ADRIANA: Geeking Out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Vileela. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking Out is also produced by my daughter, Hannah Maxwell, who incidentally, designed all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the socials by going to bento.me/geekingout. My wonderful editor daughter will edit out any, any stuff. I pay her good money.

CHARITY: How old is your kid?

ADRIANA: She's 15.

CHARITY: Nice.

ADRIANA: That's a good age. Yeah. And she sports right now...she's sporting some really rad pink hair. Last year, she had gone purple, and I just took her to get a cartilage piercing, which I'm like, hey, I have no issue taking you. No issue taking you. I'll look away while it happens. Yeah, it's super fun. Super fun.

CHARITY: I went to college when I was 15, and I felt very adult at the time. And now I look back and I'm like. I was a child. What was I doing?

ADRIANA: You feel so old when you're in high school or like, when you're 15. I remember when I graduated college and I'm like, everyone looks like a baby.

CHARITY: Yeah. Time of rapid change.

ADRIANA: Yeah, for real.

E13 ENCORE: The One Where We Geek Out on Kubernetes with Kelsey Hightower

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Adriana Villela, Hannah Maxwell, Kelsey Hightower) — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 04:00:00 +0000

About our guest:

Kelsey Hightower has worn every hat possible throughout his career in tech, and enjoys leadership roles focused on making things happen and shipping software. Kelsey is a strong open source advocate focused on building simple tools that make people smile. When he is not slinging Go code, you can catch him giving technical workshops covering everything from programming to system administration.

Find our guest on:

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show Links:

Additional Links:

Kubernetes the Hard Way (GitHub)

Transcript:

ADRIANA: Hey, y'all, welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And today I have the pleasure of geeking out with me, Kelsey Hightower. Welcome, Kelsey.

KELSEY: Happy to be here.

ADRIANA: And where are you calling in from today?

KELSEY: I'm in Washington state, so on the border of Portland, Oregon, and Washington.

ADRIANA: Awesome. Well, let us get to it with the warm up questions. Are you ready?

KELSEY: I am.

ADRIANA: Okay, first question. Are you a lefty or a righty?

KELSEY: Right handed.

ADRIANA: All right. iPhone or Android?

KELSEY: iPhone forever. And I've tried android. Given that I've worked at Google for almost eight years, I've tried, but I'm an iPhone person.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I'm an iPhone person too. I never tried android. I went straight from BlackBerry to iPhone.

KELSEY: I think BlackBerry was definitely...I was a BlackBerry person. I was also a Nokia person. But I think once iPhone really dialed in the ability to have third party apps in the App Store, iPhone all day.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I'm the same way. That was like one big sticking point. And for us in Canada, when the iPhone first came out, we didn't even have access to the App Store. So if you wanted any apps, you had to jailbreak your iPhone until it finally became available...because we get everything a little bit late here.

KELSEY: Awesome.

ADRIANA: Okay, next question. What's your favorite programming language?

KELSEY: The one that I can get things done in. So, at one point it was Bash, then it was Python, then it was Ruby when I worked at Puppet Labs, and then it's been Goblin, probably for the last ten years.

ADRIANA: Cool. Awesome. And Mac, Linux, or Windows?

KELSEY: Mac on my desktop. Linux on the server.

ADRIANA: All right, next question. Dev or Ops?

KELSEY: They're one and the same.

ADRIANA: I love it. Okay. JSON or YAML?

KELSEY: JSON. If I had to program against it, YAML if I had to write it.

ADRIANA: By oh, yeah, I definitely agree. I do find, like, manipulating JSON in Python is nicer, but YAML is more readable.

KELSEY: Yeah. To all the people that are like, JSON over YAML, let me watch you write it and see how fast you change your opinion.

ADRIANA: Yes, I totally agree with you there. Okay, this one's a little more controversial, and you can thank one of my previous guests for hinting at it. Spaces or tabs?

KELSEY: I don't care. I actually don't care if Python makes me uses Spaces and my IDE does the right thing. I'm totally fine, actually.

ADRIANA: I'm down for that. Okay, two more questions. Do you prefer to consume video or text when you're consuming content?

KELSEY: It depends. If I'm trying to learn, I need to read it, I need to see it, I need to be able to kind of backscan read it twice. But I do like video in terms of when people are really good at the human side of it. Right? Like, if they're expressing or showing me something, like, I want to see the code run. I want to see where they click. I want to see how they start. But when it's like learning something in the programming world, I need text. People are pretty bad at video and programming lessons.

KELSEY: Like, oh, just write these three lines of code. I'm like, can you please scroll up so I can see what you imported to make this work? So when it comes to seeing code, I want to see no snippets. I want to see as much as possible, but if I'm just going through for the first time to get the flow, video.

ADRIANA: I totally agree with you. And you landed on one of my big pet peeves. When consuming content for learning stuff, which is the code snippets, because I have been and I'm sorry, Hashi people, but this is a crime on the Hashi docs that I see all the time is that I get code snippets, and I don't get to see a full example on the site, and it drives me bananas. And I'm like, what does this apply to? Give me a full fledged code example? Link me to a GitHub repo at some point.

KELSEY: I'm always asking, why are people writing docs out there giving me hints to a murder mystery?

ADRIANA: Yes.

KELSEY: Show me the whole thing. I don't need it to be cute. I don't need it to fit perfectly in your style guide. I just need to see the whole thing and what's going on. So I think people do it out of style. There's really no substance when I'm trying to learn.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I completely agree. I do find it very frustrating. That's why, for me personally, whenever I do technical docs, I give excruciating detail. All right, final question. What is your superpower?

KELSEY: My superpower? I think one thing that I've learned over the years when it comes to mentoring, specifically, I used to be all about sharing my expertise, my background, my learning. And I've noticed that I changed my approach to holding up a mirror in front of other people and convincing them to like what they see and the number of people who actually like what they end up seeing and follow up with me. I really felt like that is a superpower, that you can actually have that impact on people. So that would be my superpower.

ADRIANA: That is such an incredible superpower. And I think it's so relevant to our industry, too, because we have a lot of smart people who suffer from impostor syndrome. And I think showing people that you are actually as good as you think you are is such a huge thing. Right? I mean, we've got some amazing stuff happening. I have some coworkers who are brilliant, and they're like, oh, my God, I feel like I'm just a hack. I'm like, Are you kidding me? I can't even keep up with some of the stuff that you're telling me right now.

KELSEY: Yeah. And I try to get people to understand that sometimes you aren't as good as you want to be. And that's okay too, right? I think there's okay with making progress, entering to new domains, and just helping people just relieve the pressure. Ideally, if you're any good at this thing, you're going to always feel this way forever because you're humble enough to keep learning, so you shouldn't feel so bad about it.

ADRIANA: Yeah, that's true. That's a very excellent point. So let's get into the meaty bits. One of the things that I wanted to share with our audience was how you came to be on the podcast. We met at KubeCon North America in Chicago this year, and you were doing a book signing. And I came, stood in line, the long line. It was totally worth it. And I was wearing this mask that had the sticker for the podcast, Geeking Out, and you said, "Oh, what is that?" And I said, "Oh, that's my podcast."

ADRIANA: And you said, "Oh, I could be on your podcast." So I am so stoked that you were able to join. And yeah, I mean, I've admired your work from afar for many years. I find your approach to Kubernetes very accessible, especially because it's such a complex subject matter. So I wanted to start off with how did you get into this field in the first place? Where did you find your calling to make things technical things, gnarly technical things so accessible to folks?

KELSEY: I want to answer that question, but I want to address this advice that I give to my former self and to people that I run into all the time. And they say, how do you put in the effort to make sure good things happen to you in your career and in your life in general? And so you at that book signing with the podcast on your mask. You're advertising to the world, this is my podcast, this is what I'm doing, and you're advertising what needs to happen next. And so for someone like me, I can see that clearly. I understand in that limited interaction that there is this opportunity that I could actually be on your podcast, because now I know you have one. I think a lot of people really confuse luck and that kind of effort, right? When you put that kind of effort forward, you tend to make things happen. And so I just want to highlight that part of you having that as part of your strategy of going to KubeCon, making the best use of your time and every human interaction. So kudos to you for doing that.

KELSEY: But it's a perfect example of how people kind of design their own careers and create the world that they want. So that's perfect. Now to your question about this whole idea of explaining things simply to other people. When I was getting into tech, a lot of people come from various backgrounds I come from the...fast food was my only job background, and I didn't go to college. And so for me, learning technology was like a pivotal life-making decision. I need to get into this field. I admire people that are in this field.

KELSEY: I don't know anyone that's in this field. And so I would go get all the books and just flip through them. I remember the first book I think I bought was the A+ certification guide. I was like, I'll start there. And you just go through all of this stuff and you look at all your notes, right? You're trying to simplify all the information to truly demonstrate that you understand it. And everyone knows that feeling of the A-ha! moment where you take something that is complex to you and you finally understand it, and your confidence level just goes up. It immediately goes up. And so that feeling, I've always enjoyed having that feeling because it felt so empowering.

KELSEY: So whenever I had the opportunity to speak at a meetup, I've noticed that some people at meetups or conferences, they speak, and it's just like, overwhelming. Hey, here's this computer science diagram. Here's this map that you cannot understand what's happening, and they are happy with just leaving it as a mystery to everyone. And you're like, what the hell was that? You had this opportunity to let me have my light bulb moment, but you chose not to. You chose to try to overwhelm me with your vast understanding of things that I don't. And so I've tried to say, what if I can make people feel like I felt whenever I learned a new subject? So this is why I've always said, hey, now that I understand this thing, I want to show it to you as well. But before I can, I have to give you context where I came from, my understanding beforehand, and then what led me to that understanding. And then let me show it to you.

KELSEY: And I try to use analogies and simple terms, and you can see the light bulb moment go off for people in the audience, and then it becomes a game changer for their own career. So for me, I think I got addicted to that. Like, hey, I don't want to talk. I don't want to write a tutorial if it doesn't have that impact on people.

ADRIANA: I absolutely love that because I can completely relate to that feeling, the euphoria, the high that you get from solving a problem, especially something where you've had to really put on the detective skills hat and try extra, extra hard to solve it. So that is so wonderful. I love that so much, and I think it's so important because making learning accessible to people, I think, makes it fun too, because I agree with you. Like those gnarly architecture diagrams that just look overly complicated, and then your brain starts to wander, and then you miss some important thing, and then that's it your opportunity for learning. That thing is gone if you're watching that lecture, because it's just, like, way over your head. So I think that's so great. Such an awesome approach to really disseminating information across the industry, especially these are not easy topics to unravel, right? So, Kubernetes, for example, how did you come upon doing your work with Kubernetes?

KELSEY: You know how you walk in on someone watching some hit TV show, they're on season six, right? And you ask them, what's going on? Why is this person not like this other person? They're like, I got to recap season three for you to understand what's going on on the screen right now. And so I think for a lot of people, Kubernetes was my season six, right? I had always been in tech trying to share information. If you would have caught me 15 years ago, you would have saw me at a Python conference teaching people about packaging Python applications. If you saw me maybe six years after that, I was at Puppet Labs trying to contribute to configuration management tools using Ruby. And so when I get to Kubernetes, there's a whole career behind me of trying to build similar systems without the terminology or the experience. You just know that there has to be a better way of doing things. So when I saw Kubernetes for the first time and really got hands on time with it, there was an a-ha! moment. I was like, you know what? All the scripts, tools, philosophies, techniques, it has now been serialized into this one checkpoint, and the industry has finally given it a name.

KELSEY: And so when I got that feeling, you know what was next, right? It was like, hey, I can't wait to go to a meetup to show people this thing. And I think the reason why I was able to resonate with so many people is because I had that previous background of doing things manually, trying different automation tools. And so I was just so excited. Like, I think we finally found the thing we've been all trying to build, and it looks like this. And so I think a lot of people got to see that season. It was like, oh, he's the Kubernetes guy. But there's so much historical context that goes into why I was ready to have that conversation, make those contributions at that time.

ADRIANA: That's basically the classic case of, like, everything you've done up until that point has led you to that moment, and now you're ready to take on that thing. Right?

KELSEY: I became a better speaker than I had ever been prior. I became a better engineer than I had ever been prior. And I've gone through all of that experience, and I was able to really articulate what was important. And I think for a lot of people who have been on this DevOps journey for a decade, nothing is working. We're doing all of the things: CI/CD pipeline, infrastructure-as-code. We're missing something here. And I think the industry had overly focused on automation and not abstraction. And Kubernetes was that final thing that you could touch to say, there is a difference between automation and abstraction.

KELSEY: And I think when people saw those new APIs, in many ways, I told people Kubernetes was like this type system to infrastructure. It was like a standard library that we'd never had. It's not like a thing that if you just install, it solves all your problems. But it's definitely a much better checkpoint than what people were doing before.

ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. And it's one of those things where I feel like it's a bit of a love hate relationship with Kubernetes. Right. Because in some ways, it makes life so much easier, and then in other ways, it's like, oh, my God, this thing is so complex to try to unravel in your mind. Right.

KELSEY: I want to address that a lot, because there are some people that think I am the biggest Kubernetes fan in the world, and I am not. I actually spent the last four years working on replacements. I spent so much time at Google Cloud working on serverless just to make Kubernetes go away. I learned everything about it because I think the best people that will replace it are the people who understand it the most. And the way I look at Kubernetes is very different. People look at it as a tool that is competing with their other favorite tool or some alternative ways of doing things. To me, Kubernetes is just another word in the dictionary, and my focus has always been, what does it mean? And as a contributor, what should it mean? And when I think about it as an aggregation of the previous ten year set of techniques, and you push them all together, you get this thing. And I study that thing for, like, wow, we've come a long way since those days.

KELSEY: Also, you can see what's missing. And I think that part is where, for me, that's inspiring. Oh, this is what's missing. So this is where the opportunity space is. Go work there and solve that problem. But I think a lot of people get into, oh, this thing is too complex. And I always ask them, but do you understand it? If you don't understand it and you say it's complex, then I think that's a mislabeling of the situation. You can just say, I don't understand it, therefore, I don't know why I would use it.

KELSEY: And I think that's a fair way to start the conversation. I think a lot of people are just dismissing it because it's complex, and I can do something much simpler, and then they tell me what they're doing. I'm like, that sounds like a Rube Goldberg machine. You just named 25 pieces of custom tooling so you can avoid using Kubernetes. I don't know if that adds up.

ADRIANA: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think it makes sense too, like what you said earlier about looking for something that could potentially replace Kubernetes, because I also think that we tend to get into this sort of rut where we think, well, it all ends with Kubernetes. But we all know that software has evolved so much in the last 20 years. Even everyone was talking about Heroku is this awesome thing, and now, yeah, Heroku is still in the picture, but other things have come and kind of taken our attention. So where are we moving towards then in this space?

KELSEY: I think in some ways things haven't changed very much in 20 years. You write code, you build the code, and you try to do some process to get it on the server so people can use the code. About 20 years, people have been doing exactly that thing. Now, how people have gone about doing that thing, that's changed at different speeds. Some people are still writing KornShell scripts right now as we speak, deploying apps at their company, and it probably works well. Then you have some people that are still using tools like Capistrano because they want to use something that's written in their favorite programming language, in that case, Ruby. And so they just want to keep everything within their problem domain. And then you have some people who prefer platforms like Heroku, Cloud Foundry, you name it.

KELSEY: I think the challenge has been is lots of people have been looking for that one solution for everything. I remember when Cloud Foundry, like the Heroku competitor that you could run yourself, it was like, look, twelve factor apps are the way to go, and you can write everything as long as you use Java and Spring Boot. You do that, you're done, you're great. And then it's like, okay, that's fine. What about my batch jobs? Where do I run those? Not there. What about my databases? Where do I run those? Not there? And then what happens is you end up having to bring in a second or third platform. And that's where the harsh reality of all of this stuff is, is that whenever we don't have one solution to solve everything, you end up having to complicate your infrastructure. And I think complicated infrastructure just the actual norm at this point.

KELSEY: What the world wants in terms of if you have a public facing website, you're probably going to have a cache, you're going to have Cloudflare DDoS protection. Various security concerns that Kubernetes versus Heroku is such a small part of the decision making process that even if you got that layer right, it is such a small part of the equation that thinking that's where the complexity is, ignores the big picture, where I think things like Kubernetes are 1/100th of the equation.

ADRIANA: Right. That makes a lot of sense. Now, on a similar vein of Kubernetes like product, you've also done some work with HashiCorp Nomad, right? How would you compare Kubernetes to Nomad for folks who aren't familiar with both?

KELSEY: Respect to everyone that contributes. Because I've written lots of code myself, and you do the best you can. So we just got to make sure we get that out of the way. We're not attacking people here. So if you have a HashiCorp logo tattooed on your body or Kubernetes logo tattooed on your body, this is not about you at all. When I first saw Nomad, I remember, is when they announced it in Portland at one of the smaller first HashiConfs. And I was scheduled to give a talk about Kubernetes, and I changed the talk the night before to do Nomad versus Kubernetes. And I remember Mitchell, Armon and so many people from HashiCorp standing there watching the talk. Everyone's crowded in to watch the talk.

KELSEY: And look, I'm not a mean person, so I'm not someone that's naively attack a project that I'm not working on. Doesn't make any sense. But I did learn it, got it installed. And the things I liked about Nomad, you got this single binary written in Golang. You just put it on the server and it's almost immediately ready to go, starting getting value, right? That part around, just go get a binary and just have it run on the server. It really, really made that easy. The part that wasn't great, though, is the API. You look at it and it's like, what is this thing? Right? I think I get it.

KELSEY: And it felt like, oh, you're trying to copy the Borg white paper about what a task is, but you haven't used Borg enough to know that this is not what you want to copy. And so it was a good serialization of that knowledge that was out there. They built a very high performance fast scheduler. They optimized for scheduling, speed, and performance. But the thing I think that they missed was the ecosystem. This space now is about collaboration. So you have lots of people who want to build infrastructure, automation, tools. And the one problem we've had over time, in my opinion, is that you have to glue them all back together.

KELSEY: And scripting only gets you so far when you have to glue together all these various APIs. So Kubernetes takes a different approach. Kubernetes says these things are all related. Your load balancer and your app and your IPs, and your storage, your secrets, all of it is related. And they depend on each other. And so Kubernetes felt like it lived a life where the maintainers or the people of that project had been using Borg for a decade or two and said, what would we fix? And they come into a popular ecosystem like Docker and all these pieces, and they aggregate them. And when you look at the API, you can see the experience peek through. Right here is a pod.

KELSEY: A pod has to have multiple containers because most apps that people deploy in reality, need things like NGINX or sidecars or logging daemons. And so I felt like Kubernetes had so much more experience baked into it than just being a faster, easier to manage system for deploying things. So given that, it was really nice to see over time that both communities kind of learn from each other. I remember when Nomad started adding things like volumes, sidecars, or other things that you would typically see in Kubernetes. So I think some people like Nomad because of its simplicity. I kind of lean towards the simplicity side of the house, so I kind of resonate with the whole Nomad thing. But watching people kind of glue together, like vault console, and all these other pieces to try to get a whole system, I'm like, man, at this point, now Kubernetes starts to look a little better.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I definitely agree. I worked at a job where so I had come from a Kubernetes background and worked at a job where it was a Hashi shop, and they're like, oh, we're using Nomad. So I'm like, oh, my God. How do I translate this? And when I learned that Nomad is not fully equal to Kubernetes, that you have to still stitch these other pieces together, I'm like, oh, okay, that complicates things. But I definitely agree with you. One of the things that I do appreciate about Nomad is that certain things seem a little bit simpler. And I did find the learning curve not too bad. Maybe it was because I also knew Kubernetes at the time, so maybe that helped and it allowed me to translate.

ADRIANA: But there's definitely a lot of stuff that I appreciate about Nomad, and I'm glad that I've had exposure to both ways of doing things, because I think that's really cool. And like what you were saying, both communities learning from each other rather than, like, let's hoard our secrets, because that way you can end up with better products overall, right?

KELSEY: 100%.

ADRIANA: Now, one thing that I wanted to ask you about was your famous Hashinetes tutorial. What motivated you to put this together? And also, if you can just share with folks what this Hashinetes thing is.

KELSEY: I remember the Hashinetes talk, because that was the year I was like, okay, all of these tools have been out for a while. Vault is out. Consul is out. Nomad is out. Kubernetes is out. Now what? How do you think about all these things? What do you even do with them? And I remember that year I wanted to have fun, right? Previous years, it's more about, what are these things? And then maybe years after that, it's like, it's in production. But I was like, you know what? I want to have a irresponsible talk. I remember starting to talk off: "Today we're going to be irresponsible."

KELSEY: "Do not do this in production." "Do not go to work and say Kelsey said anything." This is just having fun. Okay, and so I remember having a Kubernetes cluster or maybe even Nomad, and said, all right, we're going to install Nomad as an app to see how it works. And I just started adding different layers and components one by one. Number one, teaching people how all of these things actually fit together and how another scheduler could actually arrange them and put them into place. And then I think people had so much fun with the talk. It's like, wow, look how powerful these tools are that they can actually deploy and manage each other if you really wanted to.

KELSEY: And look how they're similar in some ways. And I think a lot of people were like, oh, these are just you need to pick one or the other. And at that time, there was a blog post of a company using Kubernetes for some stuff and then using Nomad for some of their batch jobs that would benefit from the Nomad way of doing things. I thought that was just, like, the right way to think about it. So that talk Hashinetes is like, what happens if you push Kubernetes and all the HashiCorp tools together, like using Vault for secrets instead of the thing that was built into Kubernetes, because I think Vault was a far superior secrets management product and API. And then what if you were to use Consul instead of Kubernetes built-in service-discovery? What would you get? And then let's just say you really do like Nomad. What if you were to run that inside of Nubernetes, too, and let that become the scheduler instead of Kubernetes doing the scheduling? And I think when people kind of saw that talk, they understood how to really fairly evaluate those tools. So we just had a bunch of fun.

ADRIANA: What do you think was the biggest learning from putting this talk together for yourself?

KELSEY: I think, honestly, if you just live 100% in Kubernetes land, all you know is config, maps, secrets, and you have an idea in your mind that there's no other way of thinking about these problems. Right? Everything must be a CRD. Kubernetes, Kubernetes, Kubernetes. But I think people forget I was a contributor to Kubernetes. I knew how some of the inner workings worked. And so it's like, how do you get Vault to work nicely inside of Kubernetes? Then you have to rethink the APIs, and you start, oh, the Kubernetes secret management API isn't that great at all? And so when you bring in Vault and you have to stitch it in and bake it into the whole process, you really do gain empathy for gluing all of these parts together yourself. So I think the biggest learning for me is that, number one, you can do it. There are situations where it does make sense.

KELSEY: Think about it. If you have multiple clusters and you want to have multi cluster service discovery, you cannot do that with Kubernetes alone. When you add something like Consul, you can have Consul be the place that takes over DNS. And guess what? Voilà, you can now address multiple clusters using one service discovery tool. And so it's like, oh, okay. So even though Kubernetes hasn't solved all the problems, it doesn't mean that you can't bring in all these alternative tools to step in and fill that gap.

ADRIANA: And it's nice to see that everything plays nice in that little ecosystem and that you can, I guess, take advantage of each tool superpowers, right, to sort of give that boost to Kubernetes Awesome. Now, on the Hashi front, I also wanted to talk to you briefly about a talk that you gave at KubeCon EU, "From Community to Customers". And I attended that talk, and I really enjoyed the talk. I thought it was very interesting how you were talking about this fine line of what to keep open source versus what not to keep open source. One example that you cited was HashiCorp, and then shortly thereafter, HashiCorp changed their licensing. So what are your thoughts around that?

KELSEY: Yeah, I actually had this question come up a few times, and I always tell people from a place of empathy, I had a project, Confd. It became a little popular. I remember going to FOSSDEM on the other side of the world in Europe, and watching someone give a talk about using Confd, this miniature configuration management tool, and how they were using it and why they thought it was one of the greatest projects ever. Like, as a maintainer of an open source project, you'd love to see a community form around the thing you've built. But as a solo maintainer, you also know how hard it is to say no. And you wake up on, like, a Saturday morning and it's like, hey, I work at a huge company that makes tons of profit, and I get paid really well to do my job. I would like you to work for free and add this feature that we really, really need to make even more money. And you're like, no, this is not my priority.

KELSEY: Number one, you're not paying me anything. And then two, you know what? You're going to have to prioritize that itself and maybe step up and do some contributions. And so when you think about it that way, and as someone who's also contributed code to HashiCorp products in the past, I did those contributions to scratch my own itch. And I understand that once I deliver those changes, it's on the HashiCorp team to maintain them forever. And so I understand the relationship here is me contributing code is not the end of the story. And so when they make that licensing change, I put myself in their shoes of trying to run a business and remember, they're a public traded company. So a lot of these decisions are not in fully their control anymore. The market wants to see profit growth.

KELSEY: I don't know if you've ever worked at a profitable company, people listening to this. But having stagnant revenue year over year is a fast way to get shareholders to leave investing in your stock. So now they have this added pressure of no longer just making the open source community happy. The people that they kind of started their careers off of, now they have to try to make the market happy. And there you get into different behaviors. So now you got to figure out where to get revenue from. And if you ask someone, Where do you get revenue from something that is given away 100% for free? Last I checked, most people do not pay for things unless they have to pay for things. And so you got to draw the line somewhere.

KELSEY: And I think the big controversy is, where do you draw the line? Do you draw the line on the core of the product? NGINX tried to do things like that. It didn't work out well over time, do we draw the line on, like, enterprise features and Web UIs? Right? That could be a fair place to draw the line. And so I think for a lot of people, HashiCorp decided to draw the line at commercial competition. If you take our software and start competing against us, using our name, likeness, whatever we say now in our new license, the business source license, that you can't do that. And so if you're being honest, as a user, don't really care. Like, I don't plan to start a business competing against terror. If you're being honest, I literally don't care.

KELSEY: And most people don't really exercise all their open source freedoms anyway. I'm not saying that's not a good reason not to have them, but a lot of these licenses like Apache 2 to me to fully realize the benefits of them. I think you do need to become a contributor to really understand what the code base does, be willing to step up to fork a project when the time comes and having the skills to maintain it. A lot of people don't understand that's the other part of this deal. And so when they change that license, I think people got a wake up call. They own that project. It is not our project. Even those with that HashiCorp logo somewhere tattooed on their body, it's not your project.

KELSEY: It belongs to HashiCorp. And so now I think there's a rethink. And a lot of people forget HashiCorp predates the CNCF, right? So they're not a part of a foundation, even though a lot of their technologies are foundational, TerraForm, Vault, those things belong to HashiCorp, a private company doing what they have to do. And so for me, I look at that business license change and says, great, they made their stake in the sand. From a business perspective, this will be good for HashiCorp. Now they can say no. And now their terms are a bit clear and no longer vague. Now, for the community that is upset,

KELSEY: now it's time to exercise those open source rights we've all been talking about for so long. You get to fork the project, you get to maintain the project, bug, fixes security, fixes new features and then ask the question how compatible should you remain going forward with the thing in which you branch from? That's what's on the table. So those are my thoughts on it. It's very pragmatic. I think it's one of ownership and responsibility and no matter how you feel about it, you're going to have to take on ownership and responsibility going forward.

ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. It makes so much sense and I think you hit on a very important thing when it comes to maintaining an open source project, which is maintaining it. It is a lot of freaking work and especially if it's something that you do on the side for funsies. You can only expect so much, especially if you're the solo maintainer. So also hats off to anyone who is a solo maintainer of an open source project or works with a very small team because it's a lot of work. It's a labor of love at that point, right?

KELSEY: I want to make sure people understand. A lot of people may have an ops background. That's definitely where I come from. And people think dev is easy and there's the same stress that you have in operations, right. For example, if you replace a hard drive in a server with a bad hard drive, you worry the first couple of days like, is that RAID configuration going to actually rebuild on time and the hard drive is going to stop being slow before traffic comes. You worry about these things and this is why we started doing things like on-call. And when you are maintained of open source project, you know that anything you merge in will make its way to someone's production, someone you probably don't know and you're going to feel responsible and accountable for doing that. And so there's a lot of this added pressure of like, hey, I got to be able to say no and make the right decisions to make sure that no one is going to be negatively impacted by these projects.

KELSEY: I think a lot of people forget that when we start to ask and I don't like the way this person runs this open source project, there is so much pressure that goes into it. So just know that there's humans behind these projects. There's a lot at stake. So if they say no to your new feature or they have to make a business license change or stop accepting pull requests for a while while they go tend to other matters, you just have to understand that just what comes with the territory.

ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. There are humans behind those repos right at the end of the day. Well, we are coming up on time, but before we wrap up, I was wondering if there are any parting words of wisdom that you would like to share with our audience?

KELSEY: I don't know if there's any parting words of wisdom, but I do think we're at this next cycle of new technology on its way, whether it's AI or LLMs, some people only know that stuff as chat GPT. And the question that I'm hearing a lot around is, like, is this thing going to take my job? And I always ask those folks, what is your job? And they say, "Well, for the last ten years, I've just been running scripts and automating things, and I'm like the same things for ten years in a row." I was like, "Listen, if that's how you would describe your job, then yes, you might have a problem when a new set of tooling comes around that reduces the need to do that." And that's always happened throughout tech. And I think what most people should probably think about is take these moments of insecurity and just do some self reflection and say, "Hey, my tools"...and I think we started the conversation this way. People tend to confuse automation to abstraction, and a lot of times, people get so comfortable automating the same things over and over, almost like a Westworld Loop, that they forget that we should rethink the thing that we're automating and ask ourselves if we should replace it with better abstractions. So I would say this this may be your very moment to pause for a second look at the work you do, and ask yourself, "Is it time for a new abstraction?" And if it is, I think that's the perfect opportunity to either go find a project that's attacking that problem or maybe even start your own that introduces the new abstraction based on all of that experience that you have.

ADRIANA: Awesome. I really love that. Well, thank you so much, Kelsey, for geeking out with me today. Y'all don't forget to subscribe, and be sure to check the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media. Until next time...

KELSEY: All right, everyone, don't forget to Peace Out and Geek Out.

ADRIANA: Geeking Out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Villela. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking out is also produced by my daughter, Hannah Maxwell, who, incidentally, designed all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the socials by going to bento.me/geekingout. Hey, hey Geeking Out fans! We're taking a little break for the holidays, so this will be the last episode of 2023. Be sure to catch us again in January as we Geek Out with a fabulous lineup of guests.

ADRIANA: See you in 2024. And Peace Out, and Geek Out. Bye!

E12 ENCORE: The One Where We Geek Out on the OTel Operator with Jacob Aronoff of SNCO

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Adriana Villela, Hannah Maxwell, Jacob Aronoff) — Tue, 15 Oct 2024 04:00:00 +0000

About our guest:

Jacob Aronoff (he/him/his) is a Staff Engineer at ServiceNow Cloud Observability, formerly Lightstep, the tech lead for the Telemetry Pipeline team, and an OpenTelemetry maintainer for the OpenTelemetry Operator project. He's spent his career in a variety of backend roles acting as a distributed systems engineer, an SRE and a DevOps professional. Jacob's focus is enabling customers to reliably send telemetry data with a focus on Kubernetes and OpenTelemetry.

Find our guest on:

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show Links:

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Transcript:

ADRIANA: Hey, y'all. Welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela. Coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And geeking out. With me today is Jacob Aronoff, who is also one of my coworkers. Welcome, Jacob.

JACOB: Hello. Very happy to be here. I'm so happy that we get to do this. I feel like we talked about this in Amsterdam, and I'm so excited that we get to make it happen.

ADRIANA: I know, right? Yeah. This is awesome. So as we start out, I'm going to do some lightning round questions. They are totally painless. No wrong answers. So are you ready?

JACOB: I'm prepared. Let's do it.

ADRIANA: Okay, cool. All right. Are you a lefty or a righty?

JACOB: I am a righty. So I always thought I was supposed to be a lefty, and my parents forced me to be a righty.

ADRIANA: Interesting. Soul of a lefty. iPhone or Android?

JACOB: iPhone. I just got the new one. USB-C all the way.

ADRIANA: I'm so jealous. I think I'm going to wait one more year because I want the iPhone...I don't like the Pro Max. It's too big. But I want the Pro.

JACOB: It's way too big.

ADRIANA: I want to wait until they upgrade the optical zoom to whatever the Pro Max offers.

JACOB: Yeah, that makes sense.

ADRIANA: Yeah. Anywho, go on. Okay. Mac, Linux, or Windows?

JACOB: Mac for sure. Big Mac boy. Whole life.

ADRIANA: Feel you. I feel you. Okay. Favorite programming language?

JACOB: I feel like Go. I mean, I'm a huge fan of Go. It used to be Swift or Elixir. Those are my two a little bit more funky choices. I used to work in Elixir, and I really loved it. Definitely one of the most fun languages I've had the chance to do. Swift, I haven't done for a few years, but there are a lot of little Easter eggs around my socials that refer to Swift a lot.

ADRIANA: That's why your social handle is get_sw1fty.

JACOB: Exactly. Yeah.

ADRIANA: Okay, I get it.

JACOB: A lot of Easter eggs.

ADRIANA: Nice.

JACOB: Still, I was the first person to ever write a Datadog SDK in Swift, and it's still on their website.

ADRIANA: Wow. That is awesome. Very nice. Very nice. Cool. Okay, next question. Dev or Ops?

JACOB: That's a really hard one. Dev. I'm just going to say dev.

ADRIANA: All right.

JACOB: Ops is fun, but you're still doing Dev if you're doing Ops. You're still Deving. You're still Deving.

ADRIANA: I like it. Especially modern Ops. Right? I mean, maybe not...well, even Bash scripting back in the day, right? Ops was more bashy, less like Terraforming.

JACOB: Yeah. Back when Ops is mostly just like Jenkins scripting with Bash. That's still Dev. There's still a lot of Dev stuff in there, so it's always been like that. It's just new abstractions.

ADRIANA: Yeah, fair enough. That's a really good point. I like it. Okay, next question. JSON or YAML?

JACOB: It's just...I'm a YAML engineer. I can't deny it.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I like YAML better. No disrespect to the JSON people out there, but I don't get it. YAML forces me to do indentations, but that's okay.

JACOB: Yeah, that's all right.

ADRIANA: Yeah, cool. Two more questions. Do you prefer to consume content through video or text?

JACOB: Probably text. I love to read really long form things, especially, I don't know, I save a bunch of articles whenever I see them and they'll be like, ten minute, 20 minutes reads, and whenever I have some real free time, then I'll go through one or two of them and that is like my favorite way to consume. I probably consume more video, realistically.

ADRIANA: Oh, really?

JACOB: Yeah, I watch a lot of YouTube videos, like "How To" type things.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

JACOB: But I love to read more than I love to watch. Watching is too passive.

ADRIANA: I get too yeah, I agree. I think that's what I find annoying about watching videos. Like, someone sends me a video link, I'm like, it better be like some short video. So if it's like an Instagram video or YouTube short, it's fine, but send me a five minute video, I'm like, I'm never going to watch it. Even if you tell me it's like the most wonderful thing in the world, I'm not going to watch it. I'm so sorry.

JACOB: Or it's like, even if you watch it, you get so distracted by another thing. It's just like I don't know.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I think the only way I can consume, quote unquote, a YouTube video is if it's audio only. So I'm like just doing chores around the house and listening to it, then it's okay, right? My brain is like it helps me focus better.

JACOB: I feel that basically you're just podcasting at that point.

ADRIANA: Yeah, exactly. Which I love me a good podcast.

JACOB: Yeah.

ADRIANA: Okay, final question. What is your superpower?

JACOB: Superpower? I have a useless superpower. I can do a noise. I can make a noise that's really I can click with my tongue really loudly.

ADRIANA: Okay, now you have to demonstrate.

JACOB: I will, but it might disturb some people in this office. Okay.

ADRIANA: Damn.

JACOB: I don't know if that came through.

ADRIANA: It came through okay over here.

JACOB: It's really loud.

JACOB: That was like a quieter one.

JACOB: It's useful when it's like, I need to get someone's attention who knows that I can do that. And then I'll do the click, and then they'll be like, oh, there he is.

ADRIANA: Nice. I like, that. Cool. All right, now we shall get to the meaty bits, which is sweet. Let's talk OTel.

JACOB: Let's do it. I'm ready.

ADRIANA: All right. Yeah. So I guess for starters you're involved as part of your so we both work at Lightstep, which I guess is now ServiceNow Cloud Observability. I guess you and I met because we both work in the OTel space, although we work in different areas of the OTel space. Why don't you tell folks what you do specifically around OTel?

JACOB: Yeah, so I sort of got started with OTel two years ago when I joined the company working on the OTel Kubernetes story and what's going on there. Basically I came from a Prometheus shop that really heavily invested in Prometheus and I had sort of seen the great stuff with Prometheus and then some of the struggles with Prometheus and I came in and I was, you know, I now work on top of a metrics backend. What's the best way to get metrics there? OTel has the OTLP format and so I wanted to figure out the best way to get Prometheus metrics into the OTLP format and then into our backend, specifically in Kubernetes and what is the best way to do that. So sort of began this journey on the operator group, which is a SIG within OTel that works on a piece of OTel code that sits within your Kubernetes cluster, within your environment to make it really easy to deploy OTel Collectors and do auto instrumentation and things like that. And then the feature I was working on was to make it so that you could really easily scrape and scale metrics collection. So that was sort of my first foray into it. And then I started contributing a lot. I became a maintainer for the project and now I just sort of work on OTel Kubernetes stuff all the time. So thinking about new features, new ways to help users run their whole environment for telemetry collection in Kubernetes, that's really the focus.

JACOB: How do we make that as easy as possible for people? There's definitely a lot to be done, but it's a really great group of people that I think think pretty deeply about this stuff and are very good at sharing and caring and not very what's the word? Nobody's really holding on to legos. Have you heard that phrase? Is that like a known phrase? Yeah.

ADRIANA: I haven't heard that expression before, but I like it.

JACOB: Everybody's happy to share. There's not really someone who's particularly unwilling to accept something. Yeah, nothing like that. It's really based on the merit of the feature, not the fact that you don't get to do it nice. It's a good group as a result.

ADRIANA: I really like that and I can vouch for that too because I've bugged you with a bunch of questions around the operator when I was trying to understand it better. And I've also posed questions to the operator Slack Channel and people have just generally been really nice about answering my questions, which is awesome because I think definitely tech has, I would say. I'm sure it still exists. But you see stack overflows where people ask questions and then you get some asshole who's putting you down because you're a novice to the subject and you're just trying to understand it. I get none of that from the Otel community, which I love because then it makes me unafraid to ask questions and so it makes it easier to learn.

JACOB: Yeah, and a thing that I try to make sure of, at least with our group, is for anybody who's like a new contributor. I try to go really out of my way to thank them for their contribution and make sure that they're sort of set up for success with what they're doing. Like, even today, someone was asking some questions on our GitHub about some operator features. I gave them their answers and they said, if you have more questions, reach out in our slack. Happy to follow up there. And so they followed up, asked some more questions. They asked for a feature that we didn't have. I was like, oh, if you make an issue for that, we can get that on the books.

JACOB: It's not that hard. And then I was like, hey, this is actually really easy feature. If you wanted to contribute it, I can walk you through that process. I can show you an example of, like, here's an example that you can look at for someone who did something similar in the past and let me know if you have any questions. And that's what they're going to go do now. They're going to make their first contribution. So it's something that I'm really happy to see as not just with my group, but like, all the groups, people are really happy to walk you through contributions and make sure that you're supported. And if there's a feature that you want, people will actually take you seriously.

JACOB: They respond to you with sincerity, not what's the other word? They respond to you with sincerity, not hostility. And so there are no questions that you could ask that I've seen where someone's going to really get angry at you for asking that question. And I think that that's, like, a really nice thing. It's good to see a humble bunch and not like, a really egotistical bunch.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I completely agree. And I think that's why people keep contributing to OpenTelemetry, which is great. Now, as a follow up question related to OpenTelemetry, we had you on for the OTel End User Working Group for, well, two sessions. So first for our Q&A session and our OTel in Practice, which we host those two sessions on a monthly basis. And you had a really cool story, actually, about migrating to OTel within the context of an observability company migrating itself to OTel. And why don't you talk a little bit about that? I think it's so cool.

JACOB: Yeah. So previously our company was on...before we had a metrics platform...we were on stated. Like, all of our metrics were recorded via statsd. Sometimes we would rewrite them in traces, which was pretty weird, or we would have them go through a proxy so that we could aggregate them in some way and get some information out of them. So we were previously on the statsd, and then we were also on a really old version of OpenTracing. This was before the OpenTracing and OpenCensus projects merged into OpenTelemetry. And so we were on that old OpenTracing version.

JACOB: And so I took on this work to migrate us to OpenTelemetry for everything. Well, metrics and traces. Logs support is still in the works, but that's the next migration. But so I started this project for migrating our metrics to OpenTelemetry, at which point the metrics SDK was still in beta, or the metrics API was still in beta, the SDK was in alpha. And so the goal was to really help the people on the, you know, iterate on their designs, work on performance and really tighten up that spec. So I did that, and then I actually found a bug in our maybe not a bug, a performance issue in the metrics code, which was a result of us having to convert from the new OTel format for attributes into the old OpenTracing sorry, other way around to convert from the OpenTracing attributes format to the OpenTelemetry attributes format. The reason this was a problem was because we shared this implementation between our tracing and metrics, and it meant that every time we recorded a metric, we had to do this conversion on the fly. And it doesn't sound that bad on an individual basis, but when you're recording hundreds of thousands, millions of metric points, that's a lot of conversions and that type of thing can really add up totally. And after I gave some of this performance feedback to the team, I actually realized that we could do this OpenTelemetry migration for tracing as well, which would then get rid of this performance concern.

JACOB: And so in the midst of the metrics migration, I took a pause and then we began the tracing migration. The tracing migration was much easier because it was a more mature format at the time. So that process was a bit smoother. There were a few weird things here and there. You can read about that, I think online somewhere that we have documented, maybe, I think there's some blog posts.

ADRIANA: We have the recording from your OTel in Practice, OTel Q&A discussion as well.

JACOB: Yeah, cool, thanks. But so we finished that migration, we went back to the metrics migration. We got to use that performance benefit. And the OTel people actually worked on a lot of the performance recommendations that we made. So we were able to finish the metrics migration as well. And so it was really neat because I love these types of migrations, because you're really just like, you'll see the phrase a lot, replacing the engine of a flying plane. It's like doing that in place. And that's really what it feels like sometimes when you're dealing with hundreds of thousands of data points per second, how do you replace your telemetry collection about that? That's a pretty challenging thing for any company, not just us.

JACOB: But then when you're the vendor serving the metrics. It's like, who's watching the watcher? That type of thing. Really the most difficult part is just reorienting your brain to think about the environments correctly to be sure that when you're talking about environment A, you are sure that that's where the data should be and not somewhere else, right?

ADRIANA: Yeah.

JACOB: Because for most of these telemetry vendors, whether it's us or Datadog or New Relic, it doesn't really matter. All of them have a meta telemetry environment that's sort of the secondary place that they send the telemetry of their main environment to. So that's the thing that you're monitoring. That's what lets you do these migrations effectively as well.

ADRIANA: Yeah. So here's a question because this is actually like a really cool use case, because when we talk about bringing in OpenTelemetry to an organization, if you're lucky and you're starting out your application from scratch, you have the luxury of factoring observability into your architecture, right? And so you can start instrumenting in OpenTelemetry right off the bat, hopefully, right? One can dream. But then you also have the so called brown field scenarios, right, where it's brownfield. I have zero instrumentation and then there's the brownfield of like, I have instrumentation, but it's out of date. And I think that's something or not out of date, but it's not up to date with a standard, which now like the standard being OpenTelemetry. And so those are two really interesting conversations to have because I think a lot of the organizations that are adopting OpenTelemetry probably fall into one of those two categories. And from talking to a lot of folks, it's interesting too, because you have this conversation of like, you start telling them, oh yeah, I work in OpenTelemetry. Oh yeah, OpenTracing, we use that.

ADRIANA: And I'm like, no, not the same, not really. You're having to educate them on that. But folks are also like, even if you get them sold on, like, okay, OpenTelemetry is the thing you got to now talk about a strategy for bringing that into the organization. And that can be very tricky. I mean, where we're at, it was an easy sell because it's like, well.

JACOB: Yeah, this is what we do, this is what we work on. We should be doing it ourselves.

ADRIANA: Yeah, exactly. So that's not even the problem. But even with that easy...I'll say easy, right? Because you're not having to deal with that hurdle. You have the hurdle of like, well, I've got some existing stuff now that I have to migrate. So one thing I'm wondering is, as you mentioned, there was some old OpenTracing stuff in place. And one of the things about OpenTelemetry is that they say they're backwards compatible with OpenTracing, OpenCensus. Now, which from my understanding means that if you have that stuff in place, you don't have to gut it right away.

ADRIANA: However, you probably don't want it to stay that way forever. So what do you say to folks who are in that position?

JACOB: A real it's a benefit that OTel provides these bridges to these legacy formats so that you can start using OTel and then get all of that in place. The thing that I always think about whenever doing these migrations, whether it's like a service, your telemetry, it doesn't really matter. The question is, how long do you want to be in a dual state? How long do you want to be in a state where you're potentially confusing someone on call? It's like the real crux of the issue is it's like always imagine yourself on call for whatever service you're changing, and someone gets paged at, like, 3:00 A.m.. Do you really want someone to have to reason about where your telemetry is coming from or how it's getting generated? You don't you really want that to be consistent. You don't want to have to ask the question, oh, is this like an OpenTracing thing? Is this an OTel thing? In the same way that if you're migrating a service and you have legacy service and new service, if you're in the dual state for a long time and you get a page for an upstream thing that's related to both of these downstream services, it's really frustrating to have to ask the question, which of these downstream things is affecting me? Right? Yeah, it'd be much easier if it was just I look at the single downstream, and I know that's the problem. Basically, it's shaving the decision tree for.

ADRIANA: This that you're doing.

JACOB: And so anything that you can do to remove the amount of time that you're in that dual state, removing those branches is going to do you better in the long run. The migration path is good that you can do this. There's another path, which I also think is a great option, where the OTel Collector probably supports whatever format you have right now. I'd be surprised if it doesn't. What you could do is just send rather than installing a bridge into your code, you could just send your legacy format to the Collector and have the Collector output, and then you can change your application to use OTel in whatever time frame you want, and then just have that sent to the collector, which already accepts OTLP. Yeah, right. And so that'll help you actually verify that the migration worked. You're already getting OTLP.

JACOB: You don't have to do anything with that. And then once you start sending OTLP from your application, you should see no difference in what's yeah, and that's a pretty verifiable thing. You could actually even use the file exporter on the OTel Collector to actually dump the data that you get. And then for Service A, run it with Jaeger for ten minutes, dump that data with the OTLP out, and then do Service A again, but with OTLP, dump that data for ten minutes, and then just see what it looks like, understand that you should see, like, a pretty minimal difference between those.

ADRIANA: Right.

JACOB: And that type of thing can give you so much confidence. And you can do that probably from your local environment without even needing to push it up. And so that's something that we didn't really consider as an option at the time. But had we thought of that, I definitely would have done it that way. It would have been a great option.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

JACOB: Where we could have just moved to OTel instantly and then backfill. Right. That's like a much easier path.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I agree. I mean, it's a very low friction approach, especially at my old company. They were using OpenTracing in a few spots, and so the mention of moving to OTel kind of sent people in a panic. Like, we have to re-instrument. Yes, we do. But hopefully never again after. But that idea sent people in a panic, and I had the same thought as you, which was like, yeah, just pump it through the Collector. Like, you don't have to change your code right away, but with the intention of eventually changing your code.

ADRIANA: Because now, correct me if I'm wrong, but if you continue on OpenTracing, you don't get to reap the benefits that you get with the whole OTel ecosystem, right? I mean, you don't end up with the traces and metrics correlation and the traces and logs correlation or any new updates to the API or SDK, right? You're kind of stuck with whatever OpenTracing was when it froze, when it was retired, basically.

JACOB: Yeah. Which means if there are any CVEs, you're kind of like, out of luck. Which is a bad state to be in.

ADRIANA: Totally.

JACOB: It's a really bad state to be in.

ADRIANA: Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, I definitely like that. Now, going back to the OTel Operator. So you said that you're doing mostly work around the metrics portion. It's the Target Allocator specifically, right?

JACOB: That's exactly. Right.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

JACOB: Now it's a bit more than that.

ADRIANA: Okay.

JACOB: But back then, like, last year was basically all target allocator stuff.

ADRIANA: Okay, cool.

JACOB: I can explain it. So basically when we started this process, someone from AWS had designed this thing called the Target Allocator. The goal of it was that you could distribute Prometheus works in targets. Targets are things that are like IP addresses, like a pod, a node, your old EC2 instance, whatever it is. You then go and scrape that instance to generate metrics. Prometheus works where it's a single monolith and you have a list of targets and it scrapes those and stores that data. You have to do this because if you have more than one instance of Prometheus, there's no way to tell which instance should scrape which thing. And so you're just going to be duplicating those scrapes. With OTel, we have the benefit of we don't need to store those metrics because we're just handing them off to the next thing with OTLP.

JACOB: So the Target Allocator's goal is to allow you to distribute those targets amongst a pool of collectors. So if you have 300 targets and you have three Collectors, the Target Allocator could say, I'm going to give each collector 100 targets evenly. Right, but you need to have 100.

ADRIANA: Collectors then to send it to...is that what that means?

JACOB: No, you would just have to have...sorry...if you have 300 targets and you have three Collectors, then it's 100 targets per collector and then you would just forward that to your destination. So it'd be like if your destination is Prometheus actually, which now accepts OTLP, you could have OTel do all of your scraping and then just send the data to Prometheus as your backend store, right? And that would be like a totally viable option.

ADRIANA: Gotcha.

JACOB: If you really wanted the ability to shard your scraping and scale how you scrape targets, that would be a pretty viable approach.

ADRIANA: Right, which Prometheus doesn't support the sharding right now, right?

JACOB: So Prometheus has experimental sharding support but it doesn't have the ability. So it can shard your scraping, but it can't figure out your querying effectively. So because Prometheus is also a database. If you have three instances of Prometheus that are scraping each different targets, you'll only be able to query...you'll have to query the right instance each time because it doesn't know how to do that communication...to ask for, "Who has this metric?" At least that's my understanding of it. Maybe they've changed that, but I don't think they have.

ADRIANA: Cool, okay. Yeah, that's super interesting. And so this allows you to scrape the Prometheus metrics which are not I mean, basically you're scraping it from wherever your source of Prometheus metrics is, right? It can be whatever, it can be coming from your infrastructure or whatever. And then this thing basically does the sharding for you and then it'll send your metrics to a destination. The destination could be Prometheus itself or it could be any observability backend that supports metrics essentially.

JACOB: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Cool. And that's the real benefit. I mean, we also open up by using the Target Allocator, we can be a little bit smarter as well. So the thing that Prometheus does, because it's all in one, is most of the targets that you get, you're just going to drop. The way that the scrape configs work is you get a target which has a bunch of metadata and then your scrape config determines whether or not you should actually get the data from that target.

ADRIANA: Got it.

JACOB: Even prior to making the request. And so usually you have to keep all of those in memory because you're constantly scraping them and you're constantly asking this question does the metadata match my scrape config? Does the metadata match my scrape config? And so forth. Whereas because we have the Target Allocator, we can actually just drop any targets that we know the Collector won't scrape okay in advance. So we only tell the Collector to process targets that it will end up scraping.

ADRIANA: Okay, so it's like a filter.

JACOB: Exactly. That's what we call it. We call it a relabel filter.

ADRIANA: Okay.

JACOB: So the real reason that this is really cool and why we added this in is because then we can also really evenly distribute targets to Collectors because we can say only. So if you have 300 targets, we use this strategy called consistent hashing, where you just hash each target and their metadata to assign that to a Collector ID. And so if you have, like, let's say, 500 targets, but you really are only going to end up scraping 100 of them after this filter, it would be better if you only tell the Collectors...if you only distribute the targets that you're going to end up scraping, because it's going to be more even rather than trying to fit in. It's the pigeonhole principle, right?

ADRIANA: Yeah.

JACOB: If you have three boxes and you have 500 targets, you might evenly distribute it at first, but eventually, when you go to scrape them, it might be uneven once you figure out what you're actually going to scrape.

ADRIANA: Right. By the time the Collector is receiving them, you've already just gotten the ones that you want, and so it can give you an even distribution of those. So then there isn't an imbalance, basically.

JACOB: Yeah, exactly.

ADRIANA: Nice. That is super cool.

JACOB: It's very clever.

ADRIANA: Every day. Yeah, that's very awesome. So is the Target Allocator only part of the OTel Operator? Is that something that's available as part of the standalone collector?

JACOB: So the Target Allocator is its own image. Like, it runs separate from the Collector binary. You could theoretically run it without the Operator. There are definitely some people that do that, but we don't support that as like, first class support. Reason why is that we do a lot of logic to rewrite. In order to make this work, you have to rewrite the Collector's configuration, and you also have to rewrite the Target Allocators configuration. It's just a bit of, like, data munging that we don't want users to have to do just because it's a little bit complicated. So we do it in the Operator for you.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

JACOB: There are people who will take what the Operator gives you, remove the Operator, and then just run it themselves.

ADRIANA: Right.

JACOB: And that's kind of a viable option. Yeah, but that's bespoke you'd have to do that yourself. And if you ask me a bunch of questions, I'll try to help you, but there's a certain point at which I can't help you. I don't know what you're doing.

ADRIANA: That sounds like someone's idea of, like, a fun weekend project.

JACOB: So we have a bunch of requests from people to enable the Target Allocator as part of the Helm chart, the raw Collector Helm chart. And I tried to do it, and it was so hard. It just proved so difficult to do. The config rewriting was so challenging because Helm isn't really a language. It gives you some go templating stuff, but at a certain point, it doesn't get you all the way there.

ADRIANA: Right.

JACOB: And so I wasn't able to make it work, and I eventually decided to give up because it was too much of a time.

ADRIANA: Yeah, that makes sense.

JACOB: Which is unfortunate because people ask for it a lot.

ADRIANA: Yeah, that's interesting.

JACOB: Yeah.

ADRIANA: Now, obviously there's an OTel Operator because obviously a lot of people run the Collector in Kubernetes. Do you know, is it common for people to run collectors outside of Kubernetes? I mean, obviously, if you're not a Kubernetes shop, I would imagine that would be the use case. But how common is it? Do you know?

JACOB: I don't know. I mean, I'm sure there are a bunch of people that do it, because I'm in my little Kubernetes world, I don't hear about it that often.

ADRIANA: Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough.

JACOB: I'm pretty isolated, but there are definitely people who just run Collectors as binaries on raw EC2 instances.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

JACOB: GCS instances. People are doing it, for sure.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

JACOB: I don't know. They probably have a whole different class of problems than the one.

ADRIANA: I know we're coming up on time, but I wanted to ask you quickly. Well, by the time this episode comes out, I don't know if KubeCon will have passed, but all the same, but do you have anything coming up at KubeCon that you want to talk about?

JACOB: I do indeed. So one of the main projects I'm doing for the Operator right now is adding support for the OpAMP protocol, which is a new part of OpenTelemetry that gives users the ability to do remote configuration management and agent configuration and Observability, sort of, with superpowers. And I'll be giving a talk with Andy Keller from ObserveIQ on OpAMP and how it's going to make your life a lot easier to manage these pools of Collectors that you have. So I am working on this project in the Operator group that will allow you to basically understand the topology of your Collectors in your Kubernetes cluster and also remotely configure them. Add in new features, push out updates, everything that basically allow your cluster's observability to be on autopilot for you.

ADRIANA: Nice. Who doesn't love that? Very cool.

JACOB: Stop thinking about it.

ADRIANA: Is that part of Observability Day, or is that part of the KubeCon, like the main conference?

JACOB: Main conference.

ADRIANA: Nice. Very nice. Yeah, very cool.

JACOB: I don't know how many people can fit in the room that I'm in, though. I thought they'd tell you that, but I guess they don't.

ADRIANA: It'll be a surprise the day of.

JACOB: It will. It'll be anywhere from five people to 500 people.

ADRIANA: I'm always nervous for these types of things. I think on the KubeCon schedule, you can see people already will sign up for your talk and you start seeing people signing up to attend your talk. And if it's like a small number, you're like, oh my God. And if it's a large number, you're also like, oh my God.

JACOB: Yeah, I'm very nervous. Yeah.

ADRIANA: Is like a very big deal. But yeah, this is awesome. Very excited for your talk. Oh, the other thing that I wanted to mention also, I don't know if it's going to come out by the time this comes out, but I do want to promote it because you were on the Maintainable podcast, you recorded an episode recently.

JACOB: I did indeed. I don't think that's out yet, but definitely something to look out for, though I have no idea when that'll be out.

ADRIANA: We will find out. Yeah, I think when I recorded an episode, I want to say like, in the spring and it came out a couple of months later.

JACOB: So probably there's a backlog of editing.

ADRIANA: Yeah, exactly.

JACOB: It's a whole process.

ADRIANA: I feel you. I have a backlog of editing for this too.

JACOB: Yeah, that's just how it happens.

ADRIANA: Yeah, totally. But anyway, something to look forward to as well, so you all keep an eye out for that. Now, before we part ways, do you have any interesting pieces of advice, be it like in tech or OTel or whatever, or any hot takes that you wanted to share with folks?

JACOB: I think the thing that I always say is just do something that you enjoy. If you're looking for a job, just like find something that work on a project that you enjoy. Find something that's weird and fun and doesn't really matter and just brings you some joy. I think that we all sort of forget that coding can be really fun and enjoyable and there's so many things out there that are so cool right now, especially. And there's so many things that I think have been forgotten just out of the consciousness. I used to do a lot of coding with SignalFX and Java to do UI building and games and stuff, and I haven't done that in so long, but I had so much fun doing that. So if you're looking for a job and you don't know how to do it, my best advice is to do a project that you find very fun and interesting and not just one that you think will play well on a résumé. Because if I'm interviewing you and you tell me about a project that you were so happy to do and really excited about, that's going to be ten times better than a project that you didn't really care about.

JACOB: Yeah, just have fun is my advice.

ADRIANA: Yeah, that is really great advice and I couldn't agree more. Yeah, and coding should be fun. It definitely puts me in a happy place when I'm working on an exciting project that I dream up some weird thing that I want to explore and then you learn so much and I don't know, you get a high. The programmer's high.

JACOB: Exactly.

ADRIANA: Totally down for that. Awesome. Cool. Well, thanks so much, Jacob, for joining today. So y'all, don't forget subscribe. Be sure to check the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and with our guests on social media. Until next time...

JACOB: Peace out and Geek out.

ADRIANA: Geeking out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Vileela. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking out is also by my daughter, Hannah Maxwell, who, incidentally, designed all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the socials by going to Bento Me slash Geeking Out.

The One Where We Geek Out on Transitioning into Tech with Julia Furst Morgado

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Adriana Villela, Hannah Maxwell, Julia Furst Morgado) — Tue, 8 Oct 2024 04:00:00 +0000

About our guest:

Julia Furst Morgado is a Global Technologist on the Product Strategy team Office of the CTO at Veeam Software. Her passion is making Cloud Native technologies and DevOps best practices easier to understand by sharing her knowledge and experiences. She is also committed to empowering communities as an AWS Community Builder, a CNCF Ambassador, a Google Women Techmakers Ambassador, a Civo Ambassador and Girl Code Ambassador. Additionally, she organizes the KCD NY, further fostering collaboration and learning opportunities.

Find our guest on:

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show notes:

Transcript:
ADRIANA: Hey, fellow geeks, welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And Geeking Out with me today is Julia Morgado. Welcome, Julia.

JULIA: Hi, Adriana. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.

ADRIANA: I'm so excited to have you on as I love having the ladies on the podcast. It's my favorite thing is to bring amazing ladies in tech to the forefront. But also, I've had several fellow Brazilians on the podcast as well.

JULIA: That's amazing. Unfortunately, no Portuguese. But. But yeah, I love, I love collaborating with Brazilians as well.

ADRIANA: It's so much fun. And where are you calling from today?

JULIA: So I'm in New York. In Manhattan. Yeah, New York City.

ADRIANA: And at the time that we're recording this, correct me if I'm wrong, but KCD New York is taking place tomorrow.

JULIA: Yeah. Uh huh. Tonight we have a speaker reception already, and then tomorrow the whole day will have the KCD, which I'm super excited. We've been organizing it for over a year, so finally the day has arrived.

ADRIANA: Oh my God, that's so exciting. And I definitely want to dig into that. But before we do, I'm going to subject you to my lightning round/icebreaker questions. Are you ready?

JULIA: Yes.

ADRIANA: Okay, first question. Are you left handed or right handed?

JULIA: Right handed.

ADRIANA: Okay. Do you prefer iPhone or Android?

JULIA: iPhone.

ADRIANA: Do you prefer Mac, Linux, or Windows?

JULIA: Mac.

ADRIANA: And what's your favorite programming language?

JULIA: I would say JavaScript, but I recently learned that there is a programming language called Julia. I never. Yeah, I've never used it, never tried it, but I'm really curious. So, yeah, maybe. Maybe in the future I'll try it out.

ADRIANA: That's exciting. A language with your name.

JULIA: Yes.

ADRIANA: So cool. Okay, next question. Dev or Ops?

JULIA: Ops.

ADRIANA: And do you prefer JSON or YAML?

JULIA: YAML.

ADRIANA: Spaces or tabs?

JULIA: Tabs.

ADRIANA: And do you prefer to consume content through video or text?

JULIA: That's a good one. It depends. But I would say text, probably. Yeah.

ADRIANA: Right. And then final question. What is your superpower?

JULIA: My superpower? I speak a lot of languages, so maybe, you know, I'm good with languages. Not, not just programming languages, but I speak Portuguese, French, Spanish and English. So I would say, yeah, I have an easy time connecting with people all over the world. Maybe that's a super superpower.

ADRIANA: That is. That's so great. That's so great. And I, you know, one of the times that we were chatting. So for those who aren't aware, Julia writes blog posts in all four languages.

JULIA: I try to.

ADRIANA: Oh my God. Like, that's, that's so amazing. That's so much work. I am so impressed that you do this. And it's so great because, you know, especially having had a chance to meet more Brazilians in tech in the last little while, because I've been in this like, bubble of like mostly in Canada and just interacting with, with Englishspeakers and, you know, it's been interesting meeting so many fellow Brazilians in tech who, you know, like, yes, we all speak English, but there is so much craving for content in our native language.

JULIA: Yeah. And sometimes their English is not great. And whether we want it or not, it's easier to understand something technical when it's in your mother tongue. So, you know, documentation and blogs, things like that, it's easier to understand if it's in Portuguese or whoever is reading that their own language. So yeah, there is the need, the demand for that. But usually from what I see, most things are in English. So that's why I always try to create some content in other languages as well.

ADRIANA: That's so great. And, you know, to rewind a bit even further, because you have a really, really cool background and you and I met last year in 2023 at KubeHuddle. And that's when I discovered that you have a very cool background and that you're Brazilian. And so if you wouldn't mind sharing with our audience.

JULIA: Yeah, sure. So I'll give a summary if people want to listen to the long version. I gave a talk at KubeCon in Chicago about my journey from being non technical to becoming a CNCF Ambassador. But basically, yeah, I come from Brazil, São Paulo, and I went to law school there. I worked as a lawyer there for a year, a year and a half, and then I moved to the US and I studied business and I started working in marketing. And my last job in marketing was at NMSP. So, you know, working with a lot of engineers, support engineers mostly. There were some software engineers. And I never thought I would become technical, but I got laid off during the pandemic and I started a coding bootcamp. And that's when all, everything started. And I would say, I'm here today. Everything that I've achieved so far is also because of the community. So not only I studied, you know, programming languages, JavaScript, etc, that itself is not enough. You need to be involved in the community. And I think that's why I grew so much, so fast, as well.

So, you know, became a CNCF Ambassador, AWS Community Builder, ambassador to other programs as well. Organized conferences. So the KubeHuddle last year, I helped organize. I helped Marino. And then this year, I'm organizing the KCD, which is tomorrow. We're having also the AWS Community Day in New York towards the end of August. So, you know, very involved with several communities. And I think when people ask me, oh, Julia, what did you do? What's the secret? There isn't really a secret, but I think, like, when you're, you're involved with the community, it...first, it's fun, and then you grow more than you would by yourself, doing everything alone. Yeah, yeah.

ADRIANA: It's so true. And, yeah, I mean, I totally echo your sentiment on the community. If it hadn't been for the community, like, I honestly, I think my career has grown more in the last couple of years than it has. You know, I've been in tech since 2001, and I, you know, like, my career has grown more significantly in the last two years when I've been out more in the community than it has this entire time before that. And as you said, it's the collaboration. It's just getting to meet really cool people and...

JULIA: Exactly. And they become friends, and. And they want to help you, and they want to see you succeed, you know? And it becomes fun. Yeah. Because it's work. You know, work sometimes is boring, but by being involved in the community, it becomes fun. And then you also want to volunteer your free time to do, you know, contribute to an open source, open source project or. Or write a piece of content or even do what you're doing. You know, this podcast, you're doing it on your free time, so it's amazing. And then you get to meet new people every time you record it. And maybe they know someone, they'll put you in touch with them. So that's the power of community and the beauty of community.

ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. It's the networking possibilities.

JULIA: Exactly.

ADRIANA: There is just a.

JULIA: And funny enough, tomorrow, one of the keynotes, they got Covid, so they had to cancel. And I was asked to give the keynote for the KCD. So I'm giving...I know...first time, I'm a little nervous, but it's gonna go great. It's just 15 minutes, but, yeah, I'm going to talk about the community. So, initially, the title was how to boost your career with the CNCF community. And then I crossed career, and the title now is how to boost your life with the CNCF community. Because it's more than just, you know, your professional growth, it's also personal growth. And I'm really excited to talk about that tomorrow.

ADRIANA: That's so great. Congratulations on that.

JULIA: Thank you. I'm excited.

ADRIANA: Yeah. And, you know, it's been such a meteoric rise for you, I mean, considering that, you know, you started, like, around pandemic times.

JULIA: Yeah, a little over two years ago.

ADRIANA: Wow. Wow. That's wild. That's wild. And it just goes to show, that's what I love about tech is it's such an inclusive type of community. There are people with degrees in computer science, computer engineering, and then there are people who either their degrees have nothing to do with it, or they didn't go to university.

JULIA: Exactly.

ADRIANA: It's so great. My degree is in Industrial Engineering. I took some computer courses, but, you know, I, people assume, like, oh, I studied computer science. Computer engineering. Yeah, no, but I always knew I wanted to do this, so I just, like, stuck myself in that.

JULIA: And that's the way.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's so great. Now, you know, like, you're, and I think you're, like part of the, when they redid the ambassador program, you were part of, like, that new batch of ambassadors. I think we both came up at around the same time in that program. How did you hear about the CNCF Ambassadors program?

JULIA: I think I saw on LinkedIn something. You know, I started getting involved with the community, I would say a year ago, because I started programming. I thought I wanted to be a software engineer. That's the only thing I knew. I thought tech was being a software engineer. And then I found out there is so much more to it. I started learning cloud, AWS, and then cloud native as well. I got a ticket to go to KubeCon, and that's when I saw, like, oh, there is this whole new world of possibilities and tech that I can learn, and there is a whole community around that. But I think they had CNCF Ambassadors back then, but then they closed the program and they reopened a new one. Then I saw on LinkedIn a post, someone posted, you know, register or, you know, fill out the form to try to become an ambassador. And I said, why not? I'll try. I didn't have any expectations. It's like when I submit a talk, I never expect that I'll get accepted, but I have this mentality of the no, I already have, so it's better to try. And if I get the no, that's fine, you know, but if I get the yes, even better. So that's what I did, I applied for the CNCF Ambassadors and I was just very honest. I said I was starting out in tech and didn't have a lot of experience. And I started, I was contributing a lot to documentation, like in the open source world, the CNCF project documentation and localization as well. And I said that's the extent of my contributions. But I'm very passionate. Sorry. I want to help and I want this to be an inclusive community and I want to bring more people that are in my shoes as well. Bring them like beginners, people that are transitioning to tech, bring them into the community. And I think that's why I got accepted, you know, because I have disadvantage. A lot of times, people that are in the industry for 10, 15, 20 years, they don't know how to talk to people that are starting out. They think, you know, if they write a blog, that is they, for them it's like not as, not that technical, but it's still very technical and hard for people to understand. So I think I break down things even more for those that are starting out.

ADRIANA: And that's such a great attitude because I think, you know, my complaint has always been like, some blog posts are so technical because they're written by people who are just like, you know, this is their world, right? So they just assume, you know, stuff. And I take it from the point of view, same as you. Like, I know nothing and explain it in excruciating detail, right? Because there's, there's a desire for people and I think that's so wonderful. And I, I think it's really great to like, and, you know, congrats. And you just got renewed as a CNCF Amazon for another two years.

JULIA: Yeah. Congrats to us, right?

ADRIANA: Yes, yes. Yeah, it's so great. It's nice to know that we're good for two years now.

JULIA: Exactly.

ADRIANA: But I, I think it goes to show, and you mentioned two really important things, contributing to documentation and localization. Because again, we all know that technical documentation, especially for open source projects, isn't great because people would rather code. But then again, you put yourself in the shoes of someone who's new to the thing and you can't just assume that they understand. I have conversations with people where I'm like, can you explain this thing in the documentation? Like, oh, it's in like the Helm chart. I'm like...??

JULIA: Exactly. How to start. Like, you really have to take someone by hand and show step by step. Otherwise, if you just put some links or, you know, like high level stuff. People are not going to understand and then they're not going to be able to try the project, you know, implement it, and then they won't be able to contribute in the future. So you have to really start from the beginning. And I think documentation is so important, but a lot of people, they don't think like that. They don't think it's that important.

ADRIANA: Yeah, exactly. Because, you know, code. Code is the holy grail of contribution. But yeah, I completely agree with you. I started out in documentation too. It felt like the less scary thing to do. And plus, there's so much to say. There's always room for improvement. And then again, the localization, acknowledging the fact that we need to make our documentation accessible beyond just the english speakers, because there are some very brilliant technical people where they don't either they don't speak English or they don't speak English well enough to be able to communicate, but it doesn't mean that they know that they don't know what they're doing.

JULIA: Exactly.

ADRIANA: Competent people. Yeah, great. That's so great that you did that. And, you know, you know, as part of like, just going back to your learning journey, what, what sort of, um, what tactics do you do you use when you're learning a new technology so that you're, you know, to get into something new? Like what's your motivation?

JULIA: I would say mostly getting hands on, but I know it's hard, you know, because you encounter so many issues and bugs and then you want to stop and you want to give up. But I think getting hands on, getting your hands dirty and trying things, instead of just like reading a blog post or watching a video, trying the things yourself, you get to learn more. But for those that are starting out, I would say it's fine if you follow a tutorial step by step. It's okay if you don't know by heart how to do something and you have to look back at the tutorial, it's totally fine. It's that muscle memory that you built and no one knows everything by heart, like commands and things. That's why you have Google. You can google every time. And now with AI, it's making it even easier. I would say yes, getting my hands dirty and asking for help as well. Because sometimes, like I said, you encounter a bug and then you want to try to solve it yourself. You're embarrassed to ask for help, but you don't get past that point and you won't understand what's going, you don't understand what's going on. What the problem is. So ask someone that knows a little bit more than you for help. You might think, oh, I'm gonna bother that person. But like I said, in the community, everyone is so helpful. They want you to succeed and they will stop what they're doing to jump on a call with you and help you. I've had that a lot of times. You know, I had an issue, I was trying to contribute, and I had, you know, a PR error. PR error on GitHub. Someone jumped on a call with me. I shared my screen, and then, like, we, we fixed it. And I learned why, why I was getting that error. Or, you know, other examples. But I would say, yeah, also asking for help is a big thing. And I still, I'm still working on that. You know, I still have a trouble with that.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I can completely relate. I also have a hard time asking for help. And I'm always, especially, like, if there's one person, you know, that is like, kind of your comfortable go to person in an area and you're like, am I bothering them too much? Are they gonna, and I've noticed that if, you know, it's a getting to the point where they're feeling overwhelmed, oftentimes people will say, oh, you know, I might be like, a little bit swamped with stuff, but if you post in the blah, blah, blah slack channel, I'm sure there will be someone who can help out. And so, and that's what I have to, like, tell myself because I still get scared. Like, I had to write a couple of talks for KubeCon and ask questions on topics with which I wasn't super familiar. And I was like, oh, my God, I'm so scared to ask these questions on the Slack. But then I'm like, I have to get this talk done, so.

JULIA: Exactly.

ADRIANA: Yeah, it's the best motivation. And, you know, like, for you, being a newer member in the cloud native community. And it's funny because, like, I think that's something you and I have in common is that, like, we're newer to cloud native. I've been in tech for a while, but I've been on kind of the closed source side of tech. And you're like, new to tech, new to cloud native. What's been your experience around making, like, how was it when you did your first PR? How did you feel?

JULIA: Like it was scary, you know, I didn't know what I had to do. So at first I followed some tutorials on how to open my first PR, and step by step, I followed that. But like, I told you, I had some issues. Someone jumped on a call with me, and we fixed that. I felt, you know, realization and relief that I get. I got that done. And then you kind of get addicted. You want to merge and more PRs and. But it's a lot of work, you know, contributing to open source. You can't do something and, like, oh, I'll just give five minutes, and then I'll open a PR. No, if you want to do something well done, you need to put in some effort. So sometimes, like, take a chunk of your day, like, in 1 hour, and work on that. Otherwise, it's not even worth to start something. So know how much time you have to invest in that. But I think the feeling is amazing. And then you also get to talk to other people. You know, the reviewers and the maintainers, they're gonna check your work, and if there is an issue, they're gonna comment. And I had a lot of issues, you know, people would review and say, oh, can you change this? And then, like, if I didn't understand that, I would go on slack and message them. And, you know, that's how you start a conversation and you end up making friends like that.

ADRIANA: Yeah, it's so true. Yeah. Just being able to ask those questions of, like, clarify, and it's a little scary. Like, I actually had a PR the other day where I needed to chase someone down. Like, they made a suggestion to a blog post that I've written on OpenTelemetry, and I had to chase them down till they were, like, the thing standing between, like, me and getting the PR merged.

JULIA: Yeah.

ADRIANA: And I'm like, oh, my God, I don't want to bug this guy and ask him to look at my thing, but I really want my PR merged and so get over yourself. Like, just message him.

JULIA: Exactly. It won't hurt. Yeah.

ADRIANA: They don't bite.. They don't bite. I think that's the nice thing. Like, everyone's been, you know, I've mentioned this on my podcast before. Like, whenever I do a PR and OpenTelemetry, people's comments are so thoughtful. No one has ever been a jerk. Like, you know, on Stack Overflow, people are jerks.

JULIA: I know.

ADRIANA: I'm not saying, like, just in general, on Stack Overflow, some people can be total assholes and. And, like, open telemetry community is like, la la la.

JULIA: You know, I would say I only have had good experiences in, you know, in the CNCF community overall. Like, open source projects contributing to those or, you know, events that I've gone to only good experiences because I think, you know, there is the code of conduct and people really follow that. And like you said, it's such an inclusive community. People, they don't judge you or anything. They don't want to make you feel bad. They want to make you feel good and come there again and again and help out. So I'm lucky. And like you said on stack overflow, there are so many comments. I've never had those, so I can't complain.

ADRIANA: That's good. That's great. That's great. Now, the other thing that I want to ask you about is because you're an AWS Community Builder as well, right? And you just got renewed for that as well, right?

JULIA: Yeah.

ADRIANA: Awesome. Is this your second year doing it?

JULIA: Yes. Yes. So it's every year as well, not two years like the CNCF Ambassadors. But I'm very involved in the AWS community as well because part of my job at Veeam, my main product is Veeam Backup for AWS. So I have to be involved in the community and teaching, educating people about our product. And I really like database community as well. People are also inclusive and very friendly and similar to the CNCF Ambassadors. You know, you have to help out somehow. So I mostly, I create content. I give a lot of talks at AWS Community Days. I'm always, you know, visible and posting on LinkedIn, but I didn't know that this, but recently I found out that AWS has a lot of open source projects. So we were at the Open Source Summit in Seattle a month ago and AWS was there. I had a great chat with them and they were telling me about all the open source projects. I still haven't got time to check them out, but it's another opportunity to contribute to.

ADRIANA: That's so cool. And what was kind of the first thing. So did you start learning about AWS because of your role at Veeam or did you get your role at Veeam because you started getting into AWS?

JULIA: Yeah. The second thing that you said I started learning, you know, when I was doing the coding bootcamp and then going to some events here in New York. And one of the first events I went to before KubeCon was the AWS Summit here in New York. So Marino, you know, Marino, obviously the one that organized the KubeHuddle, and he invited me to go to the summit. It's free. Everyone is welcome to come. There will be another one this year. And then again, similar to KubeCon, I saw there was a whole community and you know, another space besides software engineering, because when you're starting out, when you're transitioning to tech, you don't know what's out there. You only know what people tell you. So I only knew the coding. You know, what the coding bootcamp was telling me, and it was telling me to become a software engineer. And then I started going to these events and seeing, oh, actually there is more than that. There is cloud. What is cloud? And then, like, oh, let me learn a little bit about these and see if I like it. And that's how I got interested. And then I deviated a little bit and went cloud native as well. But I'm very passionate and interested in both topics.

ADRIANA: That's so cool. And for you, like, because I'm kind of curious because I had my own, like, expectations of cloud, cloud native. What was your expectation when you first heard of, like, cloud cloud native? Was it something that was intimidating or something where you're like, cool?

JULIA: It was. I think it was more intimidating because, again, you know, coming from a non technical background, everything is new. So I already, I had, I was learning all the programming languages. You know, I was. Back then at that time, I was doing practicing react and, you know, it's a lot of things thrown at you, you know, different terms, and you have to practice and exercises. We had to build our portfolio by then, and so it was a lot. And then on top of that, I started learning about infrastructure. And what is infrastructure? Because obviously you don't have just your app. You need to host it somewhere. But I didn't know anything about that. And then I had to learn all that behind the scenes from the app, what goes on, and then the cloud and cloud native. And because of Veeam as well, I had to learn a little bit of on-prem and VMs. So, you know, it was a lot. I would say it was a lot. It's still a lot. It's very overwhelming. And tech will always be like that now with AI, and there are new tools popping up every day and new languages and new packages. So I understand when people say it's overwhelming and they want to give up. Sometimes I want to give up as well. But you know what my instructor used to say, it's a marathon and not a sprint. You don't have to know everything in, like, three months. You can take your time, three years and slowly learn everything. But people, they want to know everything. Like yesterday, they want to know everything. And that's the, our, the problem of the generation nowadays, I think.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, I agree with you. It's the instant gratification.

JULIA: Exactly. Yes.

ADRIANA: And I agree with you. Like, there's. You know, there's so many people that I meet in tech where you look at them and. And you're like, oh, my God, they're so smart. I can never be like that. It gets really depressing. I am not gonna lie. And I'll sit here...I'm like, oh, my God, they have so much stuff like me. Like, what am I worth, right?

JULIA: That's how I feel when I talk to you. And, you know, being an ambassador, I get that a lot, because a lot of the ambassadors, most of them, they know so much. They've been in the industry for several years, and they are maintainers of the open source project, and they do. They. They are part of committees in the CNCF, and. And they're doing so much. And. And you. What you're doing is just a drop in the ocean, and you feel like it's not enough, and you compare yourself a lot to others. So I totally get it. And, yeah, it's imposter syndrome, right?

ADRIANA: Yeah, big time. Big time. It's. It's funny because I think the. The thing that helps to ground me sometimes is talking to really smart people who also feel imposter syndrome. And I'm like, okay, all right.

JULIA: I think we should talk more openly about that. You know? I know. I think everyone feels imposter syndrome. Even recently. Veeam's previous CTO, he left a few months ago. Before he left, he said, I also have imposter syndrome. So imagine a CTO saying that. But you go day by day, and, you know, we have our jobs, and we are working from home. We are not really talking to people. And you don't know if the people that are posting on LinkedIn, they have imposter syndrome, obviously. Probably they have. But you think, like, their lives are amazing, and they have everything figured out, which is the problem of social media, and. But people, they don't go advertising. Hey, I have imposter syndrome, by the way. You know, I am giving this amazing talk. I have this amazing job, but I have imposter syndrome. And it's okay. They don't have to advertise that. But it would be nice if people talked more openly about that.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I completely agree. Because then. Then I think it would help make us all more human eyes. Right. Because people that we admire are probably secretly struggling. And I agree with you. That's why it's so nice to be able to have, like, open and candid conversations about mental health. And I've had the pleasure of being able to speak candidly on mental health on this podcast with various people. I've had Tim on twice.

JULIA: Oh, I love Tim. Yes.

ADRIANA: Oh, great. He's so great. He did a dedicated episode on mental health, and then for KubeHuddle this year, we did a mental health panel where he was part of it, and he's so open about mental health. And I love it because we need to have these more candid conversations. You know, it's funny because you say, like, you're intimidated by me whenever, whatever we talk. And honestly, I feel intimidated by you because I'm, like, you've accomplished so much in so little time, and you write four different languages, and I'm like, oh, my God, I don't know anything.

JULIA: You know, I don't even. I don't even count these things. Although I have an achievement list. So on notion. Yeah, I have, like, a folder where I put my achievement, although I never look at that. But, you know, people say, oh, you've done so much. And, yeah, you speak four languages, but for me, you know, it's my life. It's my day to day routine. I don't think, oh, that's more than what I should be doing or I would be doing. But then again, you compare yourself to others and you think, no, actually, you're not doing enough, and you should be doing more. So, yeah, it's a big problem to compare yourself to others. What I've learned is we have to compare ourselves to who we were yesterday or who we were, like, a week ago and not to others directly.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, I completely agree. And, yeah, it's something that I'm trying to. To do a little bit more than I. Yeah, because I. Yeah, I have the same problem. I'm always comparing myself to others, and I'm like, no, but, like, you know, the other thing, too, is, like, each of us has something unique to bring to the table. Right. And so I think we have to put everybody else aside and what they do and just focus on what you can do. Like, so at one point in my career, I worked at the same place as my father and my husband. We all worked at Accenture together at one point, and it was very intimidating because they're really smart guys and they're both very successful. And so I'm, like, thinking, I spent my time there thinking that I had to be like them, and I sucked. I sucked. I was trying to be something that I'm not. And then finally when I left and started, like, forging my own career and realizing, like, I don't have to follow in either of their footsteps. I can just bring my own brand. That's when I started doing well at work, because I'm like, I can't be like somebody else. I have to be like me.

JULIA: Yeah. Your journey is unique and doesn't have to be like anyone else's. And that's why when people ask me, oh, what did I do? You know, like, their journey is gonna be different from mine. I can tell you what worked for me and you can try to replicate that, but, you know, the outcome might not be the same. And it totally fine, you know, if you, if you don't get a job, like, if in two years, you don't get a job in tech, if it takes you a little longer or things like that, you know, but people have to start comparing themselves to other big time, I think.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Now just, I had another question talking about, like, how you got into veeam.

JULIA: Yeah.

ADRIANA: You work as a community evangelist, right?

JULIA: Yes. Yeah. Like, yeah, the role, the title is Global Technologies, but yes, it's evangelist or DevRel/developer advocate. It's the same. We. Michael, do you know Michael Cade? He's my colleague. You probably know him. If I show you a picture, I've heard the name and he says, we like to make noise, make noise in the community. So that's what we do. And that's what evangelists do as well. And, yeah, that's what my role at Veeam.

ADRIANA: That's so great. That's so great. And that was basically like the role that you've had basically, since you finished, like your coding bootcamp.

JULIA: Yes.

ADRIANA: Like your first official tech role.

JULIA: Yes. And I had barely finished the boot camp and I got this job. So I was very lucky, you know. But again, there is more to that than just, you know, people. They can't compare themselves to. My journey. I had a portfolio, I had a resume, but I had done a lot as well. I had created a lot of content. I had four YouTube channels. I was going to a lot of events. I was giving talks already, so really putting myself out there. And then I met Michael at KubeCon in Detroit. And that's how it started. He put me in touch with the hiring manager, and now I work in his team. And that's the power of community, you know, networking. Someone knows a job opening and then they can refer you and they'll put in a good word and that's how it goes. So I'm a big advocate for. I really love networking. I'm a big fan of that, you know, meeting people and not expecting anything in return. So, you know, just meeting to make friends and to have a good time. And if something comes out of it, that's fine, but not meeting someone to ask for a favor, I don't like that. I get a lot of messages on LinkedIn or Twitter, hey, I need a job. Can you do this or that? No. If you start a frank, start engaging with me and showing what you're doing, maybe it will be different. But don't just come and ask for. For a job, you know, that doesn't work.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I completely agree. And I think you touched on something really, really important, which I call it tech karma, because I think, like, you know, and it's in the spirit of community, like, you start to know enough people where you can do, like, you know, help out a friend in tech. It can be in small ways. It can be like, oh, hey, I heard of this job posting, or, hey, you know, there's a really cool person that I think you should meet. And you make an introduction at, you know, like, a social event or whatever or on LinkedIn or Twitter, and, you know, sometimes it can and, you know, just doing, like, acts of kindness in tech, not because you want something out of it, like, just for the sake of doing it. And I do find that at some point down the road, that kindness will hit you back, that somebody else will do that act of kindness or even, you know, when you're starting out, like, my philosophy has always been, like, because my degree is in industrial engineering. You know, when I was looking for, like, a tech job, especially, you know, companies were like, oh, you must have, like, a degree in computer engineering, computer science. And I'm like, I don't have that, but I have the experience in programming for several years. And, you know, somebody had to take a chance on me. And the way I look at it, yeah, you know, I want to be able to take a chance on someone else, too, repay that kindness, not directly to the person who took a chance on me, but, like, because someone took a chance on me, I want to take a chance on someone, I want to guide them.

JULIA: Exactly. Yeah. And same with me. You know, they took a chance on me at Veeam, and it was my first job coming out of a boot camp. And I know a lot of people struggle, you know, with their first job in tech, and they saw that I had the hunger to learn, and that was enough. Sometimes you don't need much on your resume or you don't need a computer science degree, but you need to show that you're willing to put in the work and you want to learn and you're going to be there when things get hard. So. But a lot of people, they want the easy way out and they want, you know, they, they think, oh, tech, they see dollar signs and they think that's it. But no, there is a lot of work that you have to put into to work in tech.

ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. And I definitely see, like, you put yourself out there all the time and obviously, like, your hard work has paid out and you always give, like, really great nuggets. Like, I definitely recommend that you follow Julia on, on LinkedIn and on Twitter because she's always posting some, like, really good nuggets of, like, just little bits of advice.

JULIA: Yeah. Life in general as well.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it's great. Especially, like, if you're getting started out in tech and, you know, whether you're a student just graduating or someone who's, you know, doing a career change, I think the advice that you give is, is great and relevant. I wanted to ask you also just before we, we wrap up, because you're doing, you're organizing KCD New York, which by the time this airs will have passed. But I always like to chat with folks. I think you're like, I think the third person that I've talked to on this podcast, third or fourth, about who's organized some sort of conference, and I've talked to Marino, I've talked to Amanda Brock, who organizes OpenUK. Who else that I talked to? Oh, Edith Puclla. She's great. She's doing like the KCD Peru. What's your experience been? You know, like, having participated, having been an organizer of KubeHuddle last year, how did that help you with organizing KCD New York this year?

JULIA: So I knew what had to be done. You know, we had a list of things that needed to be done in order to get a successful event. I think that was helpful from KubeHuddle. But again, each event is different. It's a different venue. And you need, every time you need new sponsors and then publishing on social media about the event, getting people to register and buy a ticket, all these things are different from event to event. And I think the biggest takeaway is that when you go to an event, you don't see how much work has been put in. You think, oh, great event. I'm just enjoying myself today and then I'm going home after that and that's it. You forget about it. But the organizers, they've been putting the work for, like, at least a year. And they, you know, they, they've been, my case, anxious about it. Is it gonna work out? Are we going to sell enough tickets? Are people going to enjoy it? And then, like, at the day of, we want everything to go as planned, everything to go perfect. And even after that, you know, there is the post event and what did go, what went right, what went wrong, and, you know, and start planning for the next one. So a lot of times for attendees, an event is just like one more thing on their calendar. But for, for organizers, it's a lot of work hours put into that, you know, a lot of work.

ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. And even when you have a whole team of organizers. Yeah, a lot of work. And how many volunteers for KCD...

JULIA: I think we have probably, like eight volunteers. We had a lot of organizers. We were ten, although two of them won't be able to come tomorrow, and a few of them have disappeared. It's normal. The work, a lot of times ends up being on a few people instead of the whole group, especially if it's a big group. Everything worked out, and, yeah, we have a few volunteers tomorrow just to make sure everything works, because also the organizers, they're gonna be busy with most important, the most important things. I'm also giving a keynote, so morning. I'm gonna be busy, but I'm really excited. It's going to be a great event.

ADRIANA: That's so exciting. And you have AWS Community Day later in August as well.

JULIA: Yeah, August 29, I think. Yeah.

ADRIANA: You're an organizer for that as well.

JULIA: Yes, I know, I know. I'm starting to regret that.

ADRIANA: I can see why you weren't able to help out with KubeHuddle.

JULIA: Yes, I told Marino I have too much on my plate. Yeah.

ADRIANA: Yeah. Very understandable. Because...

JULIA: But I have a hard time saying no, you know, I'm still learning that. It's really hard. Yeah.

ADRIANA: Oh, yeah. I have the same problem, and I've had to, like, there was one. One conference where I got accepted, and it was like an online conference, but it was going to be for, like, a new talk, and it was going to coincide with, like, KubeCon this year, and I'm like, I can't. Yeah, I hate to say no, but I can.

JULIA: I know. I feel really bad, but. But, yeah, we. We have to prioritize. We need to learn how to prioritize, and, you know, we can't be everywhere at the same time.

ADRIANA: Yeah, but it's hard, you know, when you're trying to, like, build up your reputation. And then people ask you to do stuff means that they're starting to pay attention to.

JULIA: Exactly. Yes.

ADRIANA: I know. It's like, me next time.

JULIA: And then you're afraid you don't want to say no.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's. It's always nice to be surrounded by people who, like, you know, it. I think oftentimes, like, our guts are telling us what the right thing to do is, which is like, having to say no. And sometimes running it past a friend or two to just validate your gut feeling is so helpful, because otherwise, you're wracked with guilt. And even if you say no, you're still going to feel guilty. But actually, I heard a really kind of interesting thing on a podcast recently, because every time you're saying no to something, you're saying yes to something else. Like, the yes can be even just yes to yourself. And they suggested, I think this was like. I think this was like, a joint episode with a podcast called the Happiness Lab, and I think Cautionary Tales. And they were basically saying for the thing that you said no, to put it on your calendar, because then when the date comes, it's not a reminder of, like, oh, I said no to this. I'm gonna cry. Oh, my God. Thank God I said no to this.

JULIA: I'm so busy, I wouldn't have been able to. Exactly.

ADRIANA: So it's a validation. So I thought that was, like, a really interesting take on it. I definitely would like to do more of that. Yeah, it's a journey.

JULIA: Exactly. Yeah. It's a marathon and not a sprint. Yeah, it's a journey.

ADRIANA: Exactly. We have to keep that in mind. Now, before we go, I wanted to ask you one more question, because you do have, like, a background as a lawyer. Do you find that that background has served you well as, like, part of your current work?

JULIA: Not really, to be honest. Not yet. My manager, he says yes, you know, because I'm so good at, you know, public speaking and writing blogs, etc. So probably my background in law, because you have to read a lot, probably that has helped. But I started getting more interest on open source licensing, and having. Then having the background in law really helps. So I started, like, doing some research recently. Nothing big, but I want to. I want to learn more about that. And I think, you know, there are a lot of lawyers that work on that area. Maybe. Maybe one day I can. And I can work with that. You know, I'm just interested at the moment.

ADRIANA: That's so cool. That's so cool. And by the way, I will. I will mention something interesting that I, that I read once, and I think it applies to people like you and me, where the things that come easily to us were like, whatever. That was, like, no effort. And the things that other people accomplished were like, oh, my God, that's so incredible. I'm saying this as a reminder to both you and me that let's. Let's celebrate the things that we do well. Even if they seemingly come easy to us.

JULIA: Yeah, even the little things.

ADRIANA: Exactly. They're still impressive to other people who don't, who might not necessarily have those skills come as easily. Yeah. As a reminder to our, to our viewers and listeners as well, because it's very easy to get wrapped up in that. Well, we're coming up on time, but before we go, I was wondering if there are any parting words of wisdom that you would like to share with our audience.

JULIA: No. Just thank everyone for listening and, you know, follow your podcast. I love listening to all your episodes. Feel free to follow me and connect with me on social media if you have any questions. And, you know, keep doing what you're doing. I'm sure you're doing great. Don't give up whatever hardship you have, you know, again, the journey is not easy. It's a marathon, not a sprint, but everything works out in the end So. Yeah.

ADRIANA: Absolutely. Those are great words of wisdom. Well, thank you, Julia, for Geeking Out with me today. Y'all don't forget to subscribe and be sure to check out the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media. Until next time...

JULIA: Peace out and geek out.

ADRIANA: Geeking Out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Villela. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking Out is also produced by my daughter, Hannah Maxwell, who, incidentally, designed all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the socials by going to bento.me/geekingouthe.

The One Where We Geek Out on Accessibility with Rynn Mancuso

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Adriana Villela, Hannah Maxwell, Rynn Mancuso) — Tue, 1 Oct 2024 04:00:00 +0000

About our guest:

Rynn Mancuso (they/them) is the developer community manager at Honeycomb.io, a contributor to OpenTelemetry, and a CNCF Ambassador. They led developer communities at Honeycomb, New Relic, Tidelift, Mozilla and Wikimedia. They're also an editor of Contributor Covenant 3 with the Organization for Ethical Source.

Find our guest on:

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show notes:

Transcript:

ADRIANA: Hey, fellow geeks, welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And geeking out with me today, I have Rynn Mancuso. Welcome, Rynn.

RYNN: Hi, glad to be here.

ADRIANA: Super excited to have you. And where are you calling from today?

RYNN: Oakland, California.

ADRIANA: Awesome. Okay, well, we shall start off first things first with our lightning round questions. Are you ready?

RYNN: Yes.

ADRIANA: All right, let's do this. First question, are you a lefty or a righty?

RYNN: Righty.

ADRIANA: Do you prefer iPhone or Android?

RYNN: Android.

ADRIANA: Do you prefer Mac, Linux, or Windows?

RYNN: Mac.

ADRIANA: What's your favorite programming language?

RYNN: JavaScript.

ADRIANA: All right, do you prefer dev or ops?

RYNN: Ops.

ADRIANA: Do you prefer JSON or YAML?

RYNN: You know, I kind of hate them both, but my friend has cats named JSON and YAML. And so I'm going to say JSON is a shadow of a black cat who is very attractive, but YAML is extremely sweet. So I'm going to say YAML wins the day.

ADRIANA: All right, love it. Next question. Spaces or tabs?

RYNN: Spaces.

ADRIANA: And then do you prefer to consume content through video or text?

RYNN: Text.

ADRIANA: And finally, what is your superpower?

RYNN: Building relationships.

ADRIANA: Awesome. Congratulations for being the fastest responder to the lightning round questions. Well, I wanted to. One thing that I wanted to talk about today is accessibility in tech and the importance of accessibility in tech, because oftentimes it ends up coming as an afterthought, if that. So, I guess, first things first, do you have any, like what, what are your thoughts around the accessibility landscape in tech? What do you see that's been super awesomely done? And what would you see that's been very poorly done?

RYNN: Yeah, it's an interesting time in terms of accessibility in tech, because when many of us, and I'm included in this group of people, first built the current standards, the WCAG, other standards for web accessibility, the web was a much simpler place than it was today. And we, you know, we emphasize the importance of writing semantic HTML, of making every element needed for accessibility, from alt text to ARIA, elements that allow you to run more advanced controls, all just part of good semantic HTML. And if you're speaking semantic HTML, the thinking went, your content is going to be very easily made accessible. Right now, the web in general is burdened with many, many components that are coming from frameworks that are coming from a range of different tools. Often your front end has a very complicated tool chain supporting it. Lots of places, plugins, lots of things that you're sucking from other places, perhaps ads, if you're serving content. All of this is more complicated for screen readers to navigate because there's lots of components. It's more complicated for people with ADHD and other cognitive challenges because there's more things to distract them.

And it's more complicated for folks who might have mobility disabilities and not use standard pointer systems. And so there's some really neat innovation coming out to address framework accessibility. And folks are building accessible frameworks, but it's still a much bigger bridge for us to cross than we anticipated with the original. And also, I think if you extend that from the front end into developer tooling, the tools that we're looking at are more and more complicated. They're more and more visual, because it turns out that things that involve sorting and classifying and pattern recognition in text AI can do very well. But humans are very good at spotting visual anomalies. That would take AI a long time because they need to know the algorithm for the anomaly. And so using developer tools and using so many of them is really, I think, taking accessibility in a lot of new directions because it's tricky to provide an equivalent user experience for everybody.

ADRIANA: Have you seen like, are you. I know that it's been like slow moving, but are you happy with the direction in which things are going?

RYNN: I'm definitely seeing things getting better. I'm seeing more concern and awareness for accessibility within tech. There's really a movement that I think really got accelerated by the pandemic and people getting to sort of see how they were in different situations than what they were used to, of folks discovering that they experienced some form of neurodivergence, particularly like lots of developers, lots of ops people are realizing that part of what made them good at their job was some form of neurodivergence, which can be very different. When you're trapped inside the house, the impact that that can have on you can be very different. And so I'm seeing folks come out as having these identities and have more sympathy, more interest in providing accessible experiences. At the same time, I think lots of folks still don't know how to do it, and we could be doing a better job of teaching and I think a better job of incentivizing folks to make accessibility something that's built in from the start and expected as table stakes, rather than something you're retrofitting for, because retrofitting almost always results in inferior user experience because you just didn't design it. With this set of users in mind, yeah, yeah.

ADRIANA: It's basically you're saying, let's shift left on accessibility, because otherwise you're doing like a square peg into a round hole, which never ends well.

RYNN: Right. And the reality is that when you build things for accessibility, you are generally making them better for everyone. The Google crawlers that do SEO, for example, are an example of a headless browser, similar to a screen reader, that has a sort of, that might have a sort of different head than a standard browser or, you know, a text only browser. It renders content quite differently. And so what you do to improve accessibility for these alternative user agents is also improving accessibility for SEO. It, another part of accessibility, frankly, is good user experience, particularly when you get to accessibility for folks with cognitive challenges, because the reality is that many, some people have formal diagnosed ADHD and it's hard to focus, and different elements on the screen will make it more likely that their focus gets hijacked. But we all have things periodically that challenge our ability to stay focused. Whether we, we're under a lot of stress, whether we're checking into our systems because we've gotten a page while we were on the train and we're trying to do it from our mobile phone, whether, again, we've gotten a page and we're at a loud bar.

And so when you improve the experience to make logical elements, draw people's focus, to make it easier to find different elements in the user interface for users with cognitive disabilities, you're actually improving it for everyone.

ADRIANA: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And, you know, it's interesting. I remember a couple years ago when I was still working at Tucows, and I remember publishing some, some blog posts on their blog, and I was talking to the person who was responsible for managing the blog, and they're like, oh, make sure you have alt text for all your images. And I'm like, oh, that, you know, like, that's something that, you know, folks take for granted, right? Like, I can see the image, why do I need the alt text? And ever since then, like, he, they got me in the habit of always, whenever I write my blog posts now and include images, I always make sure I not only have the caption, but I also have the alt text. So it's gotten me into that new habit, which I think is very cool.

RYNN: That's lovely.

ADRIANA: And then the other thing that I was thinking of as well is I remember when Hachyderm became a thing on Mastodon and folks were talking about, when you write out hashtags, make sure that you use camel case because it's easier. I think it's something to do with. It has some sort of accessibility consideration. I can't remember exactly what it is, but because of that, I also always try to keep that in mind when writing out hashtags, which is kind of annoying. It's annoying in the sense where I'm trying to do camel case, and then some platforms have the hashtag autocomplete, and then they'll autocomplete it with all lowercase. I'm like, damn it, you're ruining my perfecty...you're ruining my camel case work. I put so much effort into doing this, and then you've, like, obliterated it. But it's like, just these little things, even, that we can do to just help make things a little bit more accessible for folks.

RYNN: Right. Yeah. The accessibility concern there is that a screen reader will try to pronounce it all as one word if you have lowercase. But if it's camel case, then it understands to stop between words.

ADRIANA: Ah, gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And then the other aspect that I always think of, too, is like, from the podcasting standpoint, I always make sure that I have, like, captions included with my podcast. And so I think most of the production in my podcast actually comes from editing the captions and providing a transcript, because I have an AI tool that generates the captions, and it does a half decent job of it. But there are things that it misses. So me having to go through all of the entire transcript of each show and making sure that it's conveying the correct information so that if folks are using closed captioning on YouTube or if they want to just read the transcript from the show notes, they have that opportunity, which, you know, again, it's not necessarily things that I would have thought of in the past, but I'm grateful to folks who have pointed me in that direction.

RYNN: Right.

ADRIANA: And then the other thing that I wanted to mention, too, is, you know, I always think about accessibility, like, you know, in terms of you and I got to spend some time together at the climbing gym at a couple of conferences, and you've opened my eyes to, like, the world of paraclimbing, which I think is really, really cool. I mean, paraclimbers are like next level awesomeness. Would you mind talking a little bit about paraclimbing and even, like, how you got into climbing?

RYNN: Sure. So I got into adaptive climbing shortly after the pandemic. I honestly, there was a group in my town, I saw them advertise on the a disability LISTSERV. I thought immediately, oh, this is something super exciting to me. I always thought of climbing as an extreme sport that sort of only people in really good shape could do. I'd never thought, oh, yeah, I, as a disabled person, could be a climber. It was definitely like, you know, there are certain stereotypes of climbing, especially from the outside, that you're like, I can't do this. But I was super excited to go try it.

And so I went down and it just became something I was really excited about, started to do, you know, a couple times a week. Paraclimbing, I think, is pretty unique. Obviously, there's lots of people with lots of different types of disabilities who climb, but many of the folks in paraclimbing, we have disabilities that actually impact our mobility, our ability to walk. Some folks might be missing part of a limb. We have consciously chosen a sport that we are bad at according to any conventional standard, like, by definition, right. This is a group of people who have, you know, failed walking so badly that we use devices to walk for us, like wheelchairs or crutches, and yet, like walking up a hundred feet or thousands of feet in the case of outdoor climbing, wall. Sounds like a great idea. Yeah.

So it's a very, it's a sport full of people who are trying really hard. It's a very tight knit community. Climbing in general can be very tight knit because your safety is always on the line with the person you are climbing with. But paraclimbing, I think especially so because people are having to actively figure out how to adapt climbing to make it work for them. There's no sort of bible for how you climb as an adaptive climber. It's so specific to your body. There are things that work for lots of people, but it's so personal. And so people are figuring it out together how to do it.

What's interesting, and I think at the end of the day, paraclimbing and disabled climbers challenge the idea that we have that climbing should be about getting to the top as fast as possible, that it should be fundamentally goal oriented. Lots of climbers with mobility disabilities particularly, I see folks climb very slowly because they have to move slowly. And it's, I think, adding something unique to climbing as a sport to start thinking about it. Less is about getting to the top, doing things as fast as possible, and more is about the experience of climbing, about building strength, about solving problems, and, you know, like the way we talk about climbing and especially competitive climbing. It doesn't emphasize that. It emphasizes getting to the top of the mountain. It emphasizes how fast can you speed climb, and paracliming is the opposite of that, and I think has a lot to teach the climbing community.

ADRIANA: Yeah, it's so true for me as a climber, especially because my family climbs. And so I'm constantly comparing myself to my husband and my daughter. And it's taken me a long time personally to just get over, like, oh, they're, you know, they're getting some bouldering problem that I can't. Getting over that and just focusing on, like, am I pushing myself? Am I improving as a climber? So it's not like the competition against others, it's the competition against self. What are you doing to challenge your mental limits, your physical limits within what you're comfortable doing? Because I think that's really, at the end of the day, is climbing is all about what you're, what you're comfortable doing and how far you're willing to push yourself to do it, really?

RYNN: Exactly. Exactly. It's about personally pushing yourself. And I think comparison is definitely the thief of joy within climbing, because everyone, not just disabled people, has a unique body. There are lots of things about your body that go into which moves are easy for you and which moves are hard for you. For example, I'm super tall, so any kind of sit start where you have to start very close to the ground is super painful for me. I hate it. I can barely get in those positions. Adriana is, you know, you're super short, and so big reachy moves are difficult for you.

ADRIANA: They are, yeah, they're, they're the crux for me. They. They make me angry, and in probably the same way that the sit starts make you angry.

RYNN: Right, right. But I have big, long arms, so I can often just reach up for that kind of hold.

ADRIANA: Yeah, totally, totally.

RYNN: Yeah.

ADRIANA: And I think that's. That's the thing. As you said, it's like knowing, like, working...what...working with your body and understanding how it works. And, and that's. That's one thing that I've personally, on my climbing journey, I've had to realize. Cause, like, my daughter is similar. Similar size. She's more slender than me, she's a little bit taller, but similar size.

So I'm like, oh, she does whatever move. I'm like, then this is the way that I'm gonna do it. And then I realize, oh, I don't have maybe the same level of flexibility or, like, I just don't have the courage to do as risky a move as she's doing. And so now I have to, like, rethink my strategy. Like, how can I do this within the confines of what I'm comfortable doing, knowing how my body's gonna function?

RYNN: Right, right. She's 20 years younger than you, and it's much less of a big deal for her if she gets injured because younger people bounce back quicker.

ADRIANA: Exactly, exactly. But I mean, generally, just like, you know, that is what I love about the climbing community, though, in general, is, like, it is a very, like, welcoming community, and folks are always cheering each other on. Even, like, going to new climbing gyms in different cities, there's, you can, like, hang out with a random group of people that you'll probably never see again for a session and just climb together and cheer each other on. And I think that's, you know, we need more welcoming moments like these. And then the fact that, like, it's nice to see, like, you know, after you and I met, like, I noticed, like, in the last year, my. My local gym has been doing some adaptive climbing. And, you know, and then I thought back to, like, you know, when. When we were climbing a couple of times in. At, like, KubeCon, Detroit, and Open Source Summit last year, and. And, you know, and you kind of opened my eyes to adaptive climbing. I'm like, oh, this is so nice that, like, my local gym is, like, really embracing adaptive climbing and, like, really bringing that, like, making it more inclusive for folks, because I think I feel like that is, like, the. The essence of. Of the climbing community and also, like, just the range, as you said, of, like, different types of adaptive climbing. Like, you and I were talking at one point where you were, you told me about, like, climbers who are blind and they have somebody who calls out, holds for them as they climb. Like, I would have never in a million years guessed that that is something that was possible. And so, like, it kind of warms my heart that it really is, like, a sport that's, like, really open for everybody.

RYNN: Exactly. And, man, like, as a mobility impaired climber, comparing yourself to a blind climber is definitely the theme of joy. They're so strong! Everything works.

ADRIANA: Absolutely. Well, I did want to switch gears for a sec and also talk about another thing, which is, like, you're a CNCF Ambassador and you just got renewed for another couple of years, so congrats. Yay.

RYNN: Excited to be an Ambassador with you.

ADRIANA: Yeah, definitely. And I was wondering if you could tell folks about your own CNCF Ambassadorship journey, like, what got you to apply in the first place and what got you to continue doing the work, like, make you want to continue being an Ambassador.

RYNN: Sure. So I became a Cloud Native Computing Foundation Ambassador because I was already doing a lot of community building work within OpenTelemetry. And the Ambassador program has lots of support for people who organize meetups. And, you know, I was super excited to get that support to be sort of better connected to CNCF. I also, at the time Adriana and I started, there weren't really many Ambassadors who had a focus outside Kubernetes. So it was an opportunity to bring more awareness of our project, OpenTelemetry, which is the second fastest growing and, I think, second largest project within the Cloud Native Computing foundation to the broader Cloud Native Computing Foundation community to really attempt to make it as ubiquitous as Kubernetes. I've stayed in the program and continued to meet the requirements, less because of that, because much of that has happened over the past couple years that Adriana and I have been working on the project and more because the people in the Ambassador program are really, truly wonderful. And I love getting the opportunity to connect with people who are passionate about cloud native from all over the world that I get in the Ambassador program.

ADRIANA: And I have to say, like, I think when we were first, like, newly minted Ambassadors last year in Amsterdam, there was, like, we attended our first CNCF Ambassador breakfast. And I, you know, hats off to you. Like, you are such a social butterfly. And I sometimes, like, I can be, like, sometimes in crowds, I can be very, like, I can shut down because of the introvert in me. And it was thanks to you that, you know, like, you went out and started introducing yourself and, like, to. To various folks and, and allowed me to tag along for the ride, and that way got to meet some, like, new Ambassadors that I, I probably would have been the person standing off in the corner because I'm like, oh, my God, this is too overwhelming for me.

So, anyway, I want to call that out. Like, hats off to you. You really are like a lovely community builder. You do such a great job of, of connecting people. So I can totally vouch for your superpower on that. And what I know that obviously, we're involved together in the OTel End User SIG. Are there other areas in CNCF that you're involved in that you're super passionate about?

RYNN: Definitely my biggest investment in CNCF is the OTel End User SIG. However, I've been involved in the Deaf and Hard of Hearing working group as an act of solidarity with other folks with disabilities. I spoke on a panel at KubeCon EU with a lot of folks from that community, and they have really I think some of the hardest time, you know, because my disability, when I sit down at my desk, it doesn't impact me all that much. Sure, I have ADHD, but so do half of the developers, but my mobility disability doesn't really have any impact. And in fact, once we started interviewing remotely, it was great because I didn't even have to disclose that I had a disability until after I was hired. And for the deaf and hard of hearing folks, it's very challenging because so much of the information about new technologies you get at conferences, you get by sort of watching videos and webinars. It's tough just to follow things in text. And people don't always make things captioned.

They don't always make things accessible. And in the case of some deaf people, in fact, their first language is sign language. Sign languages aren't related word by word to their parent, to any spoken language. They. For example, American Sign Language is called American Sign Language because it shares many of the cultural assumptions of American English. What it does not share is the grammatical assumptions and the ways of saying things, because there is a language called signing exact English, and that is not so much a language as spelling out written English letter by letter. That is extremely slow. It's not a good way to communicate.

So, for example, you may have three gestures to communicate an entire sentence in sign language because the grammar is set up to be economical in terms of movement. It uses facial expressions, etcetera. And so if folks' first language is written English, if folks first language is sign language, then when they learn written English, that is a second language. And they also don't have the advantage that the rest of us have of learning how to both write and speak at the same time and being able to move back and forth between the two modalities. It is strictly a visual modality. And so it can be more challenging for folks to get involved in the community, both because everyone is speaking English out loud and because written English is not the exact analog of their signed language. There's no written version of the sign language. So I have a lot of respect for folks in this community, and there's just amazing people becoming engineers with all sorts of situations, everything from a little bit hard of hearing to, you know, folks who are completely deaf and whose first language is sign language. And I've learned so much from the vibrancy and the energy that these folks bring to this very hard problem, because literally, like, the second they go on a phone interview, their disability is exposed.

ADRIANA: Right, right.

RYNN: That takes a lot. Besides that, I'm involved in the CNCF AI working group. I have mostly been involved in sort of community building exercises for them, like managing presences at events, doing user surveys. They're working on white papers on how AI is being used in cloud native, which is super exciting to sort of see this space grow and change. And I'm really stoked that that's happening outside the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. I work on contributor Covenant 3. I built an enforcement system and enforcement manual for contributor Covenant 2, and that's led to now I'm one of the lead editors on 3, which we have started on this year. We're at the 10th anniversary of this important code of conduct that was one of the first codes of conduct available for open source projects.

The CNCF uses a modified version of the contributor code of conduct across all of their projects. So do lots of other major projects. I believe Google's open source team used it, at least for a while. They may, I think, have transitioned to their own thing, Microsoft, lots of big companies, lots of big foundations that really took it on and made it their own. And I'm excited to be revisiting this ten years after the first code of conduct, because when we thought of the first one, we were a bunch of Americans who were frankly pissed off about things like sexual harassment at conferences. And now much of that has settled down. Conference culture has changed for the better, so that there's almost an expectation that there's a code of conduct. You don't see things like booth babes on the show floor much anymore.

The position that women and non binary people have and the relationship to sexuality has really changed in the industry. And now what we are taking on is how do we internationalize this? How do we genuinely consider developers from all over the world, how do we consider different concepts of justice, different concepts of what is right, and still continue to advocate for inclusion in a wide range of cultural contexts? And how do we make this code of conduct better for the wide range of people, things people are doing these days? Because when we designed it initially, we thought, well, there will be conferences and there will be contributing pull requests to open source conference, to open source things. And now it's way more than that. We're doing way more in tech, and it's super exciting to think about all these places in which a code of conduct can be used. And it's also super exciting to be able to evolve away from strictly sort of punitive measures like, no, don't harass people, because some of that groundwork has been taken care of and it's more expected that you're not going to do those things. Now we can start talking about desired behaviors and ways to contribute to a community positively, ways to maintain the tone of a community. And so I'm really excited about the cc three work this year.

ADRIANA: That's so cool. And, you know, it's interesting, too, because, like, these are the types of things that I think most of us just take for granted. Right? There is a code of conduct, but there is a group of humans behind that code of conduct that have put a lot of time and effort in crafting that out to make sure that, you know, you're covering all the bases as much as possible. And it's cool to bring awareness to that because, like I said, it's absolutely something that we take for granted in this area.

RYNN: Right. And what I would say is people who write codes of conduct get lots of hate mail. There is a group of folks who is highly invested in being able to behave badly.

ADRIANA: Oh, wow.

RYNN: Of course, they will claim that they really support free speech or that they think everyone is equal and they want to get past this identity nonsense when you have a thing that says, no, we shall not discriminate on the basis of ability, race, national origin, and they will hide behind those kinds of arguments, especially on the Internet. But the reality is they are invested in being able to continue behaving the way that they want to anyone, and not invested in being able to show up in a community and participate in a way that's inclusive and respectful. And so as a code of conduct author, we get lots of hate mail. Many of us have, like, elaborate personal security systems that make us hard to track down because folks have received threats to their home, etcetera. So it's really important for you to go to the authors of your favorite code of conduct and, you know, make the effort to put pull request to show that you're using that code of conduct. Write them a letter saying that you actually appreciate their work because they don't get those letters.

ADRIANA: Wow. That is. I had no idea it was, like, so, so brutal out there for code of conduct authors. And I appreciate you bringing this to light because I honestly, I would have never guessed that would be so, like, wow, just an awful experience.

RYNN: Yeah. Yeah. There's always a pool of people who are like, the status quo is fine because it is serving me, and I am highly invested in keeping that the same instead of being like, you know, how can we change text so that everyone feels welcome? So there's more text. So we're all supported, and it's sad to see.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah. And so in spite of all this, like, what keeps you continuing to work on the code of conduct? Cause, I mean, I'm sure the hate mail can be scary at times.

RYNN: It can be scary at times. And, you know, I didn't work on CC one, which is when we received, really the worst of it, but some of my co editors did. And I'm aware of those stories. And I think what keeps me doing it is that I genuinely believe that making tech, and especially cloud native, in our case, a more opening and welcoming place, makes better technology. It makes better user interfaces. When we think about the needs of a wide range of users, from folks who need accessibility to folks who might not speak the language of the interface as a first language, to sort of thinking about internationalization, all of these things are better thought about by a diversity of people. And so I feel that code of conduct work, and I also was involved in rolling out the code of conduct system across all of Mozilla's projects. I didn't write their code of conduct.

It was one of the first codes of conduct that did have desired behaviors, but sort of evangelized it into all the communities, did workshops on it. I believe that codes of conduct have the power to help us heal some divides within the tech community and bring people together. And I feel like having a safe environment should be table stakes for everyone. And I want to work to make that happen.

ADRIANA: That's great. Yeah. Yeah. Everyone deserves to be in a place where they feel included and safe. And it's nice to see that, like, there is work going on in the community to help make that happen. Even just going back to the work that you said that you were doing with the deaf and hard of hearing group, even, like, I noticed in, I think, the last KubeCon that they actually had, like, someone who was basically, as the keynotes were happening, actually, I think as the talks were happening, they had someone in sign language. Like, basically, I don't know if that's the appropriate term, but translating into sign language as people spoke, which, very cool. And again, until you see that, you're like, oh, my God, I've been taking for granted this entire time that I can hear people speak, and some people, like, they can't.

RYNN: And something you don't see at KubeCon is that they have a system behind the scenes that is AI based, that takes in audio and text and puts out captions or audio in a person's native language, and lots of people are listening to it. You get to see the sign language interpreters, because at least right now, that still can't be AI'd. The translation is too different. The translation is too different. It's visual material, but that's a tiny element of all the internationalization that is going on in the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. And we're also seeing, you know, in the last year, so they've launched KubeCon China, which is actually getting folks from behind the wall. They've launched Kube Day India. India is one of the largest places that contributes to open source, and they contribute in ways that are quite different than the way we think about contribution in the west, because they go to code clubs, which are like meetups.

They'll go to code club on Friday. Like, you'll go to code club on Friday night, and you'll work through a contribution together. And you might not necessarily be, like, super skilled or all working on the same project, but your folks are learning together. But then from a code of conduct and a behavior standpoint that poses lots of challenges that we don't experience when we think about, oh, what's the code of conduct for people in the US who are sitting at home typing on their computer on GitHub, their experience is very different. And similarly, you know, China has lots of very specific rules about information going in and out of China. India, there is caste based oppression that can happen. For example, when I was at Mozilla to manage these code clubs, we ended up hiring a contractor in India who had a very good knowledge of, like, western feminism, had sort of been to school for women's studies and also of Indian culture, who could be our translator when issues came up, because we were like, this person is writing to us that people from this particular neighborhood can't feel welcome at this code club. And we care about this, and we don't understand the dynamics.

And then it's like, oh, well, these people are actually low caste, quote unquote. And this other caste, you know, they're trained from birth to hate these people. And, like, we needed an explainer.

ADRIANA: Wow. Wow, that's so wild. Yeah. These things that you just take for granted, you know, doing, working in western culture and even just going back to, like, the internationalization thing, I think I saw recently somewhere that, you know, I think the OpenTelemetry website, like opentelemetry.io. I think there they're doing. They're translating it into more languages. And I'm part of this group of Brazilians on CNCF Slack, and someone was asking around, oh, anyinterest in doing a translation into Brazilian Portuguese for opentelemetry.io. Because again, it's like if your working language is English, you totally take it for granted. But that is not the case for everybody.

And there are some very smart people out there whose first language is not English. They don't feel comfortable speaking it, and why should they? And so, like, let's make it more inclusive for them by making things available in their native language or for them to be able to contribute in their native language and feel comfortable. And that's another aspect that we so easily forget about.

RYNN: Right. And I should put in a plug that Contributor Covenant 2 and Contributor Covenant 3 are managed through the Organization for Ethical Source. And if you speak more than one language, particularly if you were very fluent in the culture of the countries that speak a non english language, we could really use you. First of all, we want to, we're trying to make sure that we have translations into as many languages as possible of CC 2. And CC 2 is sort of a direct translation from CC from, from the English. But what we would like to do with CC 3 is get folks in who have already translated CC 2 and thought some about, like, what that would mean inside their culture so that we can create translations of the code that take into mind that folks have different concepts of what justice is. Folks have different ideas about enforcement in different cultures. And we weren't able to keep that. We weren't able to, like, figure that out when we were writing CC 2 because the pressure was so great just to reduce the amount of harassment that folks were experiencing in tech. And now that we're working on CC 3, we have an opportunity to create that.

ADRIANA: So it's not just a matter of doing a direct translation, but also, like, capturing the cultural nuances. And it is. What it sounds like?

RYNN: Yeah, yeah. Probably the easiest path is to work on or review a direct translation of CC 2, and then you have a starting point for thinking about, okay, what's different in my culture that I would like reflected in a version of CC 3 that takes, that really is culturally sensitive, because that's an important part of localization and globalization efforts, is it's not just like the English words showing up in the other language. It's, does this make sense? And for our code of conduct, I think it's especially important that people are able to internalize and grasp the precepts of the code of conduct. So going back to the caste example in India, for example, we would include caste based discrimination directly. And folks in that culture are aware of what that is and how to impact that, that sort of thing. Yeah, just lots of things around cultures, ideas of justice are really different, and we want the code of conduct to be something that is so simple that people can internalize it within their own framework of justice and inclusion.

ADRIANA: Gotcha. Gotcha. Wow. I have learned so much today. This has been such a great conversation, and thank you for enlightening me on so many different areas. We are coming up on time, but before we go, was wondering if there's any either a hot take or a piece of advice that you'd like to leave folks off with.

RYNN: You know, people and people's individual stories are a really important part of technology. I think we underrate that. We think that it's all about the best tech, but the reality is it's about the human relationships. It's about how tech supports our ability to be human. And I think, you know, my advice is don't lose sight of that.

ADRIANA: Oh, that's so great. I really love that. What a, what a what? Very lovely parting words. Well, thank you so much, Rynn, for geeking out with me today. Y'all don't forget to subscribe and be sure to check our show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media. Until next time...

RYNN: Peace out and geek out.

ADRIANA: Geeking Out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Villela. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking Out is also produced by my daughter, Hannah Maxwell, who, incidentally, designed all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the socials by going to bento.me/geekingout.

The One Where We Geek Out on Data Privacy with Rizèl Scarlett

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Adriana Villela, Hannah Maxwell, Rizèl Scarlett) — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 04:00:00 +0000

About our guest:

Rizèl Scarlett is a Staff Developer Advocate at TBD, Block's newest business unit. With a diverse background spanning GitHub, startups, and non-profit organizations, Rizèl has cultivated a passion for utilizing emerging technologies to champion equity within the tech industry. She moonlights as an Advisor at G{Code} House, an organization aimed at teaching women of color and non-binary people of color to code. Rizèl believes in leveraging vulnerability, honesty, and kindness as means to educate early-career developers.

Find our guest on:

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show notes:

Additional notes:

TBD on Twitch

Transcript:

ADRIANA: Hey, fellow geeks. Welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And with me today, I have Rizelle Scarlett. Welcome, Rizel.

RIZEL: Hi. Thank you for having me. It's super fun already, even though the podcast has just started.

ADRIANA: Yay! I'm so excited to have you on. And where are you calling from today?

RIZEL: I'm calling from Boston, Massachusetts, right now.

ADRIANA: Awesome. So, fellow, fellow east coaster. As someone who lives in Boston, I gotta ask. So I just came back from a vacation trip to Stowe, Vermont. Have you ever been up that way? Because I have a bunch of family that. That goes up to Stowe, so I'm wondering if that's, like, a destination for Bostonians.

RIZEL: Interesting. I never really go to Vermont or Maine, but it's like a place I want to go. Like, it looks. When I see the pictures, it looks pretty. It's really weird. Like, sometimes when you live close to places, you don't go visit them, but you go to the far place.

ADRIANA: It is so true. Because it's like, it'll always be there. Whatever.

RIZEL: I take it for granted.

ADRIANA: It's so true. It's so true. Well, before we get started with the meaty bits, I always subject my guests to some icebreaker questions. So are you ready?

RIZEL: I'm ready. Let's go.

ADRIANA: Okay, first question. Are you a lefty or a righty?

RIZEL: I'm a righty. Like, all the way.

ADRIANA: All right, awesome. I do want to mention, even though this is coming out sometime in the fall, today is international lefty day.

RIZEL: Oh, wow. Shout out to all the lefties.

ADRIANA: I observe it because I'm a lefty.

RIZEL: I'm glad you get a day. I don't...Y'all need it. I get it.

ADRIANA: We get screwed over on various things, like scissors. So.

RIZEL: Yes. I was just saying that scissors are hard for y'all.

ADRIANA: I know. I just end up using, like, right hand people scissors, left handed. And it's a little awkward, but it's okay. All right, next question. Are you an iPhone or Android person?

RIZEL: I used to be a die hard Android person, and then, I don't know, like, once I started into tech, my job gave me a Mac, and then they gave me AirPods at one job, so I just slowly switched over to all things Apple. So now I have the iPhone.

ADRIANA: It's the gateway drug. It was my gateway drug, too. Like, when I got my first personal Mac, I was like, boom. That's it.

RIZEL: Right? Wait, wait...iMessage is all synced. Everything's just perfect. I was like, I can't go back to Android now. Sorry.

ADRIANA: I feel, ya. I had a BlackBerry before my iPhone, so I never knew Android other than helping my mom when my dad bought her an Android for a very brief period of time. And then I said, screw it, I'm getting you an iPhone. But she'd ask me for tech support on Android. I'm like...

RIZEL: What do I do? Yeah, I don't. When my mom asked me for help, I'm like, girl. She's like, but you're a computer person. I don't know.

ADRIANA: I don't want to touch it. Okay, next question. Do you prefer Mac, Linux, or Windows?

RIZEL: Oh, okay. When I was in, I used to be in IT support and I used to like Windows and Linux. I felt like they were easy to troubleshoot and all that. But then when I went to software engineering, I prefer Mac. I don't know, just, just very similar to what I told you about when they gave me a Mac. I got hooked.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I feel, ya. Yeah. I grew up on Windows. Windows 3.1. Back in the old days...

RIZEL: Oh yeah. I remember using Windows 95.

ADRIANA: Oh my God.

RIZEL: Screen savers.

ADRIANA: When that came out, I was like, mind blown. I'm like, what is this? As if Windows 3.1 could get better.

RIZEL: Oh my God.

ADRIANA: Yes. That dates me a lot. Um, okay, next question. Um, do you have a favorite programming language? And if so, what is it?

RIZEL: Oh, okay. I love JavaScript. I like SQL, and Kotlin is like my new love now. Like, SQL is like the first thing I learned, and JavaScript. And like Kotlin, I'm like, yo, why did no one tell me about this? It's bomb.

ADRIANA: It's funny because I've heard the same thing from various people who get into Kotlin and they're like, yeah, it's so good. Cleaner, like version of Java, right? Because it runs on the JVM.

RIZEL: Yes, way cleaner. I think I've learned Java in college and I was like, this thing is overwhelming. But like, Kotlin's like, it kind of, it feels TypeScript. It just doesn't feel...It feels lightweight. It's like...ok... And intuitive.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I love it. It makes me want to check out Kotlin. My dad is actually in tech, so I have like big shoes to fill. And he, for years, like, he's retired now, but for years he'd just rave about Kotlin. Like he still loves it. He's like, it's my favorite language to prototype in. Now he does Rust for fun.

RIZEL: Wow.

ADRIANA: Yeah, super hardcore. He's 71 and he does Rust for fun, so there.

RIZEL: And that's, like, cool that you have a dad that was, like, a software engineer.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like big shoes to fill, though, because it's like, you know, he knows his shit. So... Sorry?

RIZEL: No, I was like, I could easily impress my parents. Whereas you're like.

ADRIANA: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. With my dad, it's like, he'll catch the bullshit, but I love it. Kotlin. That's awesome. Okay, do you prefer dev or ops?

RIZEL: I think I prefer dev. I guess there's nice stuff about ops, but I think I'm just a more trained, formally trained dev, that's why.

ADRIANA: Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. Okay, next question. Do you prefer JSON or YAML?

RIZEL: I prefer JSON. YAML. I don't know. It gives me a headache. I don't know.

ADRIANA: Yeah...it's so funny. For me, it's the opposite. I find, like, JSON is, like, too many curly braces. It's like, Java trauma because I did Java for, like, 16 years, so I'm like, I don't want to see another curly brace.

RIZEL: I get it. I don't know. Like, it'd be like, you didn't indent the right way. And I'm like, man, how many indent?

ADRIANA: Yeah, it's punishing. It's punishing. It's true. Although, like, I'm getting mad at JSON lately because I'm, like, playing with dev containers and, like, I keep forgetting commas after. I'm like, stop yelling at me, JSON. Yeah, no, I mean, that's the worst of it, at least, but it's still like, stop getting mad at me over a comma.

RIZEL: I know that pain.

ADRIANA: I get you. Yeah. Okay, next question. Do you prefer spaces or tabs?

RIZEL: Hmmm...I don't know...people...I think I kind of mix them. I know, like, people are, like, die hard. I think I just press whatever I need to press. I don't really think about it. I just feel like, type, type, space, type, type, tab. So I don't have a preference here.

ADRIANA: Awesome. I love it. Bridging the gap between spaces and tabs. Okay, two more questions left. Do you prefer to learn things through video or text?

RIZEL: Oh, that's a good question. I think it really depends on the situation. Like, if I. If I just want to get something done really quick, like, I'm just like, I just need to figure out how to. Like, I don't want to read a book, to be honest...about, about coding, but if I see some documentation, copy and paste real quick. I'm like, da da da da da. But if I need a deep explain explainer, like, why am I doing this? What's going on? Then I prefer video because I could...I guess I could rewind. I guess you could rewind with a book. I don't know, but I...my brain consumes the information better.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, I get that. I get that. It's funny when you mentioned, like, you don't want to read a book about tech, because it made me think back to, like, in the early days, that's all you had, right? Was, like, those big, thick, manuals, like, for learning a language. And as soon as you mentioned, I don't want to read a book, I'm like, holy shit, like, PTSD. Like, I had this flashback to my childhood of, like...because my dad got me started early in coding, so... Like, I had, like, a book on basic open.

RIZEL: Wow.

ADRIANA: And I'm, like, trying to go through the exercises and type it out on my computer at the same time. Right. Because no online documentation with copy paste. Yeah, I'm with you on that. I don't want to, like, go through a programming book.

RIZEL: Yeah. Shout out to y'all that learned from the books, though. But I, like, it's just so much easier to do, like, command F and copy and paste. I mean, if the book is online, I'm okay with that.

ADRIANA: I am super down for that as well. I like that. I like that. Yeah. I hadn't even, like, thought about that until you mentioned it. Okay, final question. What is your superpower?

RIZEL: Oh, that's a good question. Um. Oh, I guess that I think I'm resourceful. Like, I think a lot of times, people...Is that a superpower? I don't know. They're like, I don't know how to get the answer or whatever. It doesn't matter if it's tech or not. I think I will find a way to make something work.

ADRIANA: That is a great superpower. And I feel like you have to be resourceful in tech. Because we're put in so many situations where it's like, yeah, you can't do that because, you know, you're not allowed to because of, like, whatever work network policy or whatever firewall shit. Or, like, I don't know. Or my problem is, like, a slightly different variant of the thing in stack overflow.

RIZEL: Yes. You can't just straight up copy and paste some text.

ADRIANA: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, yeah, I think that's such a great superpower. Well, thanks for. Thanks for answering the questions. And now we are ready to get into the meaty bits. So I wanted to start out with. I always like to hear how folks on the show have started their career. So what got you into tech initially?

RIZEL: Yeah. So, initially, I was studying psychology, like, out of college because I didn't really know what I want to study. And then I found out I don't have enough money, and on top of that, I was undocumented. So that made stuff a little bit more complicated. Like, I can't get, like, certain grants and, like, bigger scholarships that people were getting, so I was doing a lot of out of pocket. So then I had to stop going to college, and then that made me reevaluate and be like, okay, I can't. It doesn't really make sense to study psychology because I got to go get my masters to actually make...start making some kind of money or get a job.

So then I was, like, Googling what jobs make the most money really fast. And then, like, tech came up. Okay. Like, so in the beginning, it was, like, a financial thing, but, yeah, yeah. Like, so computer science came up. I got a little nervous by the math because I've never been, like, super strong in math. So I was like, I'll just do information systems major at a community college. So I did that.

RIZEL: I got an internship, got a job, and then that allowed me to, like, pay for college at the same time as having a job, but then...IT support, that was fun, but I just felt like I was really good at it, so it got boring easily for me. I don't know. It's fun, but I'm like, I need more of a challenge. So I was like, okay, I'm ready to try out computer science, but I didn't. I still didn't have enough money to go for, like, a whole bachelor's, so I went to a free coding bootcamp called Resonant Coders. Learned to code from there. And then once I got my software engineering job, then I got a bachelor's in computer science. Did that while I had my software engineering job, and then I transitioned into DevRel.

ADRIANA: Wow, that's so awesome. So it's like this accidental discovery of, like, oh, I actually like this.

RIZEL: Yeah. Yeah. I was like, this is actually fun. Like, I like the challenge, and I like the community. So cool.

ADRIANA: Yeah, the community has been awesome, and especially, I would say, in open source.

RIZEL: Yeah, I agree.

ADRIANA: So you mentioned you got into DevRel, and what got you into the DevRel path.

RIZEL: Yeah. So I was doing software engineering, and I like coding, but I'm not a huge fan of software engineering. I don't know. So, like, you know, like the whole, like, agile and everything into, like, I don't know, that's, it's just not necessarily how I work or, like, what really excites me. So on the side of doing software engineering and on the side of completing my computer science degree, I also was helping to run, like, I also helped to start a nonprofit that was teaching women of color how to code. And I was like, I really enjoy, like, making these presentation decks and just like, explaining to them little parts of code that, like, I don't know, they were asking interesting questions. They were like, why do the hyperlinks turn blue? I'm like, I don't know. I never thought of that. Let me go, like, dig into it. So I really liked that part of, like, still getting to code but explain things to people. So I was like, Googling, how do I get to do that for the same amount of money as, like, software engineering? Because that nonprofit job was not paying. So I kept finding people like Angie Jones and Brian Douglas, and I was like, what's their job? And it's a developer advocate. So that's how I, I just applied. And at first people told me, you don't have experience. But then GitHub gave me a chance.

ADRIANA: That's such a great story. And I love also that, you know, as you mentioned, like, GitHub gave you a chance. And I feel like so many times in tech careers, it's all about someone just taking a chance on you. That they see something beyond the experience, right? Like, I think that's the thing that's a little bit frustrating. I think a lot of people get very hung up on, like, do you know this exact technology? It's like...no. I can learn.

RIZEL: Right. It's not that...I mean, it could be hard, but I have the ability.

ADRIANA: Exactly, exactly. And what is modern tech if not the ability to just pick up a bunch of stuff that you never knew on the fly because, you know, otherwise you get left out.

RIZEL: Yeah, that's how it works. You're never going to know everything. Yeah. So I was really grateful when GitHub gave me the chance. I didn't even think GitHub, like, that's a big company. But I was like, oh, thanks, guys. And I ended up, I think I did really well. So, yeah, absolutely.

ADRIANA: That's so amazing. How, how, like, you know, before when you mentioned, like, working and studying at the same time and running this, this program for women of color coding, like, how, how did you manage doing that? Like, without, you know, just, like, losing your mind. Like, that's a lot of stuff to juggle.

RIZEL: I don't. Okay. I think I was super stressed out, so I wouldn't. I'm not gonna lie to anybody. Like, I was just breezing through. I was. There was. There was times that, like, I was either doing bad at my job or I was doing bad at school. Took to. And then doing good at school, but, like, it would, like, fluctuate. I never reduced the amount that I was giving to the nonprofit maybe until the last year. Like, the last. I did the nonprofit for, like, four or five years. And when I joined GitHub, I was like, this is too much. Like, I'm traveling and doing this, and, like, you could tell the quality of work was kind of lowering, so I did. I did.

There was crying nights and everything because I'm like, my homework's not working or my. My work is not working. So it was not. It was not smooth sailing, but I think I was. I was used to always having multiple jobs or multiple school and jobs, so, like, it didn't feel like anything to me. But now I'm like, I just want one job, and that's it.

ADRIANA: Yeah, that is super fair. And. And, you know, thanks for also, like, being so candid, too, about, like, you know, these things are hard to juggle. And I do often find, like, something does have to give because there's, like, only so many hours in the day. Brainpower, sleep.

RIZEL: Definitely.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. And, you know, I think. I think as we get more into our careers, because it's so easy, like, when you get early into a career, even if it's, like, it's. You've been around for a while, but, like, you've taken on a new career, you don't want to say no, because it's like, but what if this is a great opportunity?

RIZEL: Yeah, I tend to have that problem. I'm trying to reduce it, but that's been, like, a thing for me where I'm like, but I really need the opportunity.

ADRIANA: It's more exposure.

RIZEL: Yes, sorry, go ahead.

ADRIANA: I was gonna say I totally agree, but feel. But saying no also, like, feels so icky sometimes. I don't know if you feel that way, but I feel so guilty when I have it. I'm like, I'm letting someone down.

RIZEL: Yeah, I feel. I feel bad sometimes because it's just tough. I think even at GitHub, I really loved working there, and I did really well there. But sometimes some people, like, I think I was one of the more visible people on my team, and I was like, relatable. So sometimes people outside of my team would be like, hey, we need you to work on this. And I'm like, what about my coworker? And they're like, no, no. You're the only one that can do it. And people were like, you just gotta say no. I'm like, but I already said no. And they pushed back. I'm just going to say yes. Now I'm nervous, or I feel bad.

ADRIANA: But it's so flattering at the same time, right? Because I think a lot of our job, especially as DevRels, is that relatability. And that's why people consume our content, because they look at the stuff that we produce and it's good, but also, like, we're approachable, relatable. It's like, oh, I want to talk to you. So then you don't want to say no.

RIZEL: It was, like, flattering and overwhelming at the same time.

ADRIANA: I know, right? Yeah, yeah, I feel ya. And as a DevRel, have you also like, what's kind of your favorite thing to DevRel on? Is it like blog post creation, talks, video content? Like, what's your, what's your jam?

RIZEL: Ooh, that's a good question. I think blog posts are my thing. Like, I'm very. I love doing blog posts. Recently, as I've gone to this new job, maybe I've done less of them. I also like live streams because, like, live stream coding or live stream talking to other people within, um, this particular whatever industry I'm in because I think it allows me to learn more about that industry while also, like, creating a connection for my company. Um, I like talks too. I like a lot of it. The only thing I probably don't like as much is I'm probably not the best at, like, pre recorded video content creation.

ADRIANA: That's stressful. Like, you would think would be easy because it's like, I have a script, I just need to, like, talk in the video, and it's like, no worse than, like, than doing, like, a live talk or live stream.

RIZEL: Yeah, because the live stream, you're going to make a mistake. You can't rewind it is what it is. But pre recording, I'm like, no, I got to do that over and then it's like 10 hours later.

ADRIANA: Oh, yeah, I. I can totally relate. Like, I created video content last year, and sometimes it would take, like, I think for a five minute thing, it would take over an hour. And there were so many outtakes of me going, fuck, I'm sure if I hadn't deleted all those outtakes, or...like, I would have a computer full of fucks.

RIZEL: That would be a cool blooper reel.

ADRIANA: Oh my God. It would be. I want to ask you, like, about public speaking. Like, what was sort of, like, your first public speaking experience? Was it, like, in a tech setting, or was it a non tech setting? Like, what launched you into doing talks?

RIZEL: Yeah, DevRel did. Because actually, my intention was like, I don't know. I didn't. I didn't know that this was probably over ambitious, but I was like, I don't want or not ambitious. Or maybe under ambitious. Like, I thought I could sneak get away with it. I was like, I don't want to do any public speaking. I was like, I'll just sit behind the scenes. And my manager's like, yeah, I don't know if that's going to work, Rizel. So I think at first, I started off, like, doing virtual talks, and I think that was helpful because it was pretty similar to when I did a nonprofit I would, like, do talks to. Like, it was kind of like talks to beginners. So I'm like, okay. Familiar. And then after that, the first, like, in public and other people seeing me was at Kansas City Developer Conference.

ADRIANA: Oh, cool.

RIZEL: Yeah, it was a nice audience. They were, like, welcoming, so that was good. But because before that, my public speaking skills were not good. I was like. I just kept having a shaky voice. Every time I did any kind of public speaking, it could be, like, a small crowd, and they'd be like, Rizel, present your demo. And it'd be like, hello.

ADRIANA: It can be so nerve wracking going in front of an audience, because, like, I don't know if you get this, but, like, when I go to speak, I'm like, shit, they're looking at me.

RIZEL: Yeah.

ADRIANA: They expect me to say intelligent things.

RIZEL: Yeah, yeah.

ADRIANA: The self conscious thing comes up, and you're like, oh, my God. Oh, my God. I'm usually like, I'm dying before. Right before a talk. And then when once I get in the groove, I, like, calm down, and then the world melts, thankfully.

ADRIANA: But I'm a wreck beforehand.

RIZEL: Same, I think. Yeah. Now, for some reason, I don't know what switched, but now I just black out everybody. Like, I don't even realize they're there anymore, because once. Once I realize that people are there or, like. And I, like, make eye contact, that's when the nerves come back. But if I block out everybody, I'm like, I'm just talking. And it is really good.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

ADRIANA: You know, I think I do something similar because a lot of, like, advice around public speaking is, oh, focus in on one person in the audience and connect with them. And I'm like, I don't know if I want to make eye contact with people like that.

RIZEL: I don't. I probably look like I am, but I didn't see you. For real.

ADRIANA: Yeah. I'm more of a I will scan back and forth as I talk kind of thing.

RIZEL: Yeah.

ADRIANA: Oh, that's so cool. Yeah, it definitely takes. Definitely takes a practice to get used to it, and I think to also, like, just kind of go with the flow when you realize that, you know, you've, like, messed something up. I had a talk where I had a co speaker recently, and she started, like, saying my lines at one point. I'm like, no, no, no, we gotta rewind. You know, like, we're not gonna get hung up on that. It is what it is. It's like, back up, restart, and the show must go on.

RIZEL: Yeah, you just gotta go with, yeah, I make lots of mistakes, so I just have to erase them from my mind. I mean, it's whatever happened. Like, one time I showed my speaker notes, and I kind of. I just, like, I was like, oh, no, y'all can see my speaker notes, and I just moved on. Yeah. I'm like, it is what it is.

ADRIANA: For real, that is actually one of my public speaking nightmares is for people to see my speaker notes. It's a window into my soul.

RIZEL: I was like, how? In my head, I was like, how long have they been looking at the notes? Like, I don't know.

ADRIANA: I had an online talk once where, um, I had forgotten to start sharing the slides, but fortunately it was caught early enough.

RIZEL: Oh, yeah.

ADRIANA: But I was, like, so embarrassed. I'm like, I. I can't think about this. I just need to, like, carry on and pretend that this didn't happen. But that's another nightmare of mine.

RIZEL: And when I did the GitHub universe keynote, I messed up. But everybody was like, we didn't even notice. Like, I was, like, kicking myself about it. Like, I was like, oh, my God. Because basically there was, like, a recording of, like, I was demoing. What was it called? It was, like, Copilot Voice. They changed the name of it, but basically it's like, use your voice and then Copilot writes stuff for you.

Yeah, but it was really hard to do live, so we were like, we're going to pre-record it and, like, kind of pretend you're doing it live, because I didn't record it with my voice, but sometimes, like, you know, your accent or whatever, it just wouldn't always go smoothly. And we have, like, a set amount of time, like, in the background, GitHub Copilot's, like, typing all the stuff that I'm saying, and then I. I think I went either ahead of it or behind it, and, like, it typed it out way after I said something, and then I was like, oh, no. Like, I said it under my breath, and when I was done, I was like, oh, my God. Like, everybody knew it. And everybody's like, we did not hear you say, oh, no. Like, we didn't even notice you made a mistake.

ADRIANA: And, you know, that that's, like, such an important thing to call out, though, because I think, like, we tend to be so hard on ourselves when we give talks, and I think if people are interested in the content that we're producing, the things that we're talking about, they're not going to be scrutinizing every single little thing that you've done, because all they care about is, have I learned something? Am I having fun in this talk? And I think if you can deliver that, no one's going to harp on this stuff, but we, as perfectionists, lovers of our craft, were like, oh, my God.

RIZEL: I want it to be perfect. But it's never perfect.

ADRIANA: Never, never. Especially with live demos. This is why, as a rule of thumb, I don't do live demos. I pre-record my demos. I'm honestly terrified of doing live demos and live coding. So hats off to you for doing live coding, because I'm the kind of gal who likes to code in the comfort of my own personal little nook, and. And that is it. I hate it when people watch over me as I'm coding.

RIZEL: Yeah, no, I I'm not a fan of it, either, but I think it's helping help me to grow and, like, I don't know, I become a better live coder on stage, so that's been good for me. But I agree with you. It's way comfortable to just be in your bed or just, like, in your own office and just typing with no one looking.

ADRIANA: Exactly. No one can see, like, the. The angry, like, print statements that you put in. That's when I start to angry code. Why isn't this working? Why aren't you hitting the for loop?

RIZEL: Oh, my God.

ADRIANA: So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and talk about. So, you mentioned that you were at GitHub, but you've got a new gig. Why don't you tell folks about your current gig?

RIZEL: Yeah, actually, I almost worked here for a year. Now it's about like eleven months. Yeah. A company called TBD, that is the real name, but it's. It's a company or a business unit within Block. So Block has a couple of business units, like Square, Cash App, TBD, Title, like a couple different things. And, um, so just like background. Like, the idea behind all of this is like, Block really cares...or, this is their mission is like financial empowerment.

So with square, they enabled like, mom and pop shops to be able to like, accept payments through, like, you know, you can just. In the beginning it was like you just put this little card reader on a phone and you could swipe it and stuff like that. And then with cash app, I know you're in Canada, but, like, within America it's like, oh, cool, I can send money to my friends with the click of a button. And so with TBD, we're doing a couple of things. One of the things is we're creating a. An SDK that allows financial institutions to basically make it easier for you to send money internationally and like, change the currency and stuff like that. Yeah. Because like, you're, you probably know, like, it's annoying if you're going to get money from or something.

So they want to make it a smoother experience. So we're not necessarily building the tool that makes it a smoother experience, but we're building like, the SDK so that financial institutions and other businesses can take that and then they can build that. And then in addition to that, we also have this thing called Web5, which I know oftentimes people are like, what happened to Web4? And stuff like that. Like, yeah, I get it. But basically the. It's a tongue in cheek kind of name. But they're, the whole idea is they're trying to make it easier for you to own your data and your identity without block, the use of blockchain. So, like, they'll.

They're basically like, we like the idea that, like, Web3 had of like, decentralizing things and helping you to own things, but there's like a barrier within blockchain. Like, we like some stuff, but we want to make it a little bit of a lower barrier to entry. And a lot of the stuff we're using like, our open standards from the W3C. And they're not like I, before I came into TBD, I was like, what are they really doing? But it's not like they made up anything. Like, one of the open standards is called Verifiable Credentials. And that's actually what mobile driver's license use underneath the hood. Like, that's the technology, the standard.

Yeah. So it just allows you to be able to, like, have your digital identity on your phone and be able to control who can get access to certain parts of your data. Like, let's say you wanted to prove that you're of legal drinking age. Usually you will show your physical ID. It has your address and everything. You don't really need to show that. They just need to know you're over that age. So you can show your phone, have it be scanned, and it'll just be like, yep, this person's over 21 or 18 or whatever, and then you get your alcohol. So that's kind of like how the technology works.

ADRIANA: So it basically, it's like we're just showing the necessary information.

RIZEL: Yes, exactly. Yeah. It's called "selective disclosure". So you can choose to disclose only the things you want.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah. And, you know, that's so important nowadays because, like, I feel like we've basically become open books in terms of personal data.

RIZEL: Right.

ADRIANA: Because, you know, it's like, you want this, you got to sign up for that. Like, I can't go into a store. Like, I'll go into, like, a retail store. And they're like, can I start off with your phone number? I'm like, how about no? What do you need it for? Yeah, or like, you've returned something and they. They want, like, your entire life's history. It's like, I'm returning, like, a five dollar thing. Why do you need, like, all this stuff about me?

RIZEL: Exactly. And that even reminds me, I think earlier you, before the. The stream start or the podcast started, you were asking me, like, oh, do I want to talk about, like, pregnancy and tech? But that reminded me about something else. So I actually used Web5. Like, and I want to build more on this idea, but, like, in a company hackathon, I was like, it would be so cool if you can, like, own your, like, menstrual cycle data, your period date. Oh, that's the same thing. Your pregnancy data, all that. Any fertility or anything that's going on with, like, your own personal health. Because I feel like as soon as I, like, Googled any questions about it, or I downloaded an, like, a pregnancy app, then, like, TikTok and all my Facebook reels were like, what it's like to be a mom? And I'm like, dang. Yeah. So I'm like, it'll be so cool to still be able to track this stuff digitally, but, like, be able to own that data and then have the ability to share it with who you want to share it with.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah.

RIZEL: There's slightly two different concepts, but very similar. So, like, the verifiable credentials. And then what I used was something called the decentralized Webno, but the details don't matter too much. But anyways, it would be like, you can decide. Maybe I want, like, my partner to see this particular information or my doctor to see just this one part, like, of the information. Yeah. The rest for myself. So, like, yeah, it would be like that.

ADRIANA: Oh, yeah, that, yeah, that is so useful. And so that's something that you said that you were building as, like, part of an. You did it as part of an internal hackathon?

RIZEL: Yeah, it's like, very, like, bare bones.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah.

RIZEL: I really want to, like, continue to build upon that. So there's. There's more to it right now, which is, like, you just add your. Your cycle data and then you have control over it, and then you could send it to someone, but I want to add. Yeah.

ADRIANA: Yeah. That's so great. Wow. Yeah. That's such a useful application. You know, it's funny because you know that back when. Back in my day, there was, like, none of this, like, tracking cycles through an app. So, like, when that stuff came out, it's like, what? You can track it through an app, but then, you know, it's like the can of worms that. That opens up. Right. It's like, oh, you got. You got a cycle tracker? And what does that actually mean? Where's my data going?

RIZEL: Right, exactly.

ADRIANA: Yeah. So, because, like, why does it need to go anywhere but, you know, within the confines of, like, you.

RIZEL: Exactly. And I get that's how, like, they make money. So they, like, do marketing that way and they sell your data that way, but it's like, I don't even know who you gave it to.

ADRIANA: Yeah, exactly. It's kind of creepy. Like.

ADRIANA: No, thanks. On a similar vein, can you talk a little bit about, you know, like, as we talked before the show, like, you mentioned that you're pregnant. How far along are you at this point? How's it been? How are you finding, like, being a pregnant woman in tech? Is there, like, do you think that there's. There is, like, there is a difference being a pregnant woman in tech versus not in tech?

RIZEL: Yeah, that's a good question. Yeah. I'm about 24 weeks right now, and I would say, hmm. I think it's probably. It's probably easier. Well, my experience. Right. If I. Maybe I was going in person a lot. That would be much more exhausting if I was going to work in person. But I have the ability to, like, work from home, so that's been good. And, like, I know that tech has a lot more flexibility in terms of, like, hours and stuff like that. Like some. Some jobs, not all of them, but, like, you know, no one's like, oh, your bubble went gray for a second.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah.

RIZEL: So that part has been beneficial. I think some parts of DevRel I might have been over ambitious with. So, like, at the. I mean, I didn't know I was going to be pregnant. So I had all these talks lined up and it went to them and I was like, oh, my God. Like, I did not know that first trimester is so exhausting. Like, I would tell people who are never been pregnant and they're like, are you eating your vitamins? I'm like, yeah, I am. Yeah, I don't think the vitamins are gonna make me less sleepy.

ADRIANA: Yes. The your dead ass tired in a way that you never thought was possible.

RIZEL: Yeah. I'm like, dang. Usually I'm a person, it's actually a little bit of a hard hit for me because I'm usually a person that, like, I don't know, I just get excited sometimes about work and I want to do, like, extra work and never been in a spot where I do not want to do extra work. In fact, I'm logging off early. Like, like, it would be like, 3:00 and I'm like, just gonna close my laptop. I can't even read what people are saying on Slack. Like, I get sleepy every day at, like, 2:30, 3:00 p.m. So that was a hard hit for me because I was like, oh, my God, maybe I was like, is all the pregnancy gonna be like this? Like, I was like, maybe I can't even work anymore.

ADRIANA: I definitely felt that in my first trimester, I legitimately thought I'm like, I'm just gonna, like, peace out for the next few months.

RIZEL: I was like, Googling, why isn't maternity leave longer? How do you more? Wait, Canada has like 18 months or something, though.

ADRIANA: Yeah, you can do up to 18 months now. So when I was pregnant, it was twelve months. So you get twelve months where. So the way it works is like, you're entitled to twelve months. Twelve to 18 months now, which means that you do have your job guaranteed after that period. Like, when you return, it's up to your company as to how much they pay you during that time. So, like, when I was pregnant with my daughter, it was, I think my company paid, like, I want to say, six weeks at, like, 90 or 95% pay. And then after that, you go on unemployment, which is like piddly poo, but you are, you are technically guaranteed your job when you return.

And I'm saying that in air quotes because there has been some shady ass shit that's happened where I've actually had a few friends who returned from mat leave, and then it's like, hey, welcome back to your job. Next day, oh, by the way, you're fired. Or it's like, oh, we're restructuring. And so there have been some interesting, like, obviously, companies are not allowed to do that, but some, some do, some have taken, like, have, have taken their companies to court over stuff like that. But, yeah, but, yeah, we do have that entitlement. I took advantage of that, for sure. It was, it was hard. Mat leave was hard because, like, I'm a very, like, I can't sit still.

I'm an ADHDer. I cannot sit still. And this idea of, like, sitting home with my baby who was like, you know, the first three months is so boring because they're just, like, sleeping, crying, and pooping, and I'm like, nothing exciting is happening. And I'm like, this is so boring, and I need to be out doing something. But then they get more interesting after three months. And honestly, like, I'm so grateful that I had that opportunity because getting to see her grow, like, over that year was so unique. But it is so hard also, like, if you're used to being active and out and about and, like, my sense of, like, I need to feel like I'm productive all the time. So, you know, even, even, like, you talking about the first trimester fatigue, like, I used to not believe in naps until I got pregnant.

RIZEL: Me too.

ADRIANA: It's like, give me a nap.

RIZEL: Yeah. My husband takes so many naps throughout the day. He's a software engineer, and I'm like, why are you taking naps? Just get your work done. Like, come on. But then I just all of a sudden, like, I need to take my daily nap.

ADRIANA: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. My husband was so excited when I started getting into naps because he loves naps. I'm like, naps are for old people. And we napped together while I was pregnant. And, like, oh, this is the best. We need more of that. And then, and then second trimester, for me, I was lucky that I got, like, my energy back. And then third trimester, it, like, it crashed again.

RIZEL: I'm preparing. I'm now I'm prepared because I, like, I mean, part of second trimester, I was like, y'all were lying. I'm still tired, but I'm like, I'm in an energetic area, so I'm trying to get as much work done as possible. And then once it's third trimester, I know I'll probably go down because I, what you were mentioning of people still getting laid off. And so I don't think my company or my manager would do this to me, but I have read a book about kind of what you said, like, how companies they use, like, maternity leave or medical leave in a sly way to eventually fire the person. And I'm like, don't want that. I want that. Like, you're like, even though Rizel was gone for twelve weeks, like, she did, she did that. She was accomplishing stuff before she left.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, I think it's a combination of, like, working for a good company, having a good manager who has your back. Yeah. Makes a huge difference. One thing that was challenging for me when I was pregnant because, like, so I'm originally from Brazil and so for my parents, like, this, like, mat leave thing, it's different there. And my mom was a stay at home mom as well, so, and so for her, it was, like, very important that my sister and I both had jobs. She's like, you need to be independent. Make your own money, la la la. So when I was on mat leave, my parents are like, you're taking the full twelve months? I'm like, yeah. They're like, out of sight, out of mind. They'll forget about you.

RIZEL: I'm like.

ADRIANA: They were like, they were really on my ass about, like, you know, taking six months off or whatever. And I was like considering it for a while. I'm like, oh, my God, what if they're right? And then six months, you know, hits, you know, into my mat leave, I'm like, I can't do that. Like that.

RIZEL: No, take all the time you need with your kid. Because if they're giving that benefit, I'm like, some people, they don't get a chance to see, like, even be at home. Like, I don't know how my friends who are, like, in retail and stuff like that, like, they worked until they gave birth and then they barely had mat leave. I'm like, wow, that is impressive. And also a little bit sad.

ADRIANA: Yeah, it's like, you have to make do, but it's like, it's so stressful and, like, your hormones are raging after you give birth. Like, if you think your hormones are raging now.

RIZEL: Oh, no. Well, I guess I don't need to worry about it. My husband does.

ADRIANA: That's true. That's true. Yeah. It's the recipients who have the hardest time. But it's nice that, like, you get to work from home, you know? And it sounds like your husband is working from home as well?

RIZEL: Yeah. He only goes into the office two times a week.

ADRIANA: Oh, nice. Yeah, that is a really good setup and. Yeah, and that's definitely, like, a huge advantage to. To working in tech and starting a family is that you're. If you're able to work from home, then you have that ability to be with your kid, and especially if your spouse is home, then you get to, like, tag team. So not one person is dying all the time.

RIZEL: Yeah, I cannot complain. If I. The only thing, if I had to do it over, I will realize how tired that you could really get, and I would have planned it out better. I think I'm in maybe a more better. A better position than maybe some other working women who are pregnant.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fair enough. Fair enough. Oh, this is such an exciting time. Do you know if you're having a boy or a girl. Are you gonna just wait to find out?

RIZEL: Oh, I know. We have zero patience. As soon as we did...the test results were available, we're like, what is it? Tell us the gender. Everyone's like, do a gender reveal. It's gonna be so fun. Like, no, I don't care. Yeah.

ADRIANA: Oh, so what. What are you having?

RIZEL: Oh, it's a girl.

ADRIANA: Oh, yay. So much fun. I'm a little biased because I have a girl, and she's lots of fun.

RIZEL: I'm excited.

ADRIANA: She edits. She edits the videos for this podcast, actually.

RIZEL: Oh, she does? Oh, look at her. Wow.

ADRIANA: But she rejects tech, so. She wants to be a dentist.

RIZEL: Okay. At least that's a good job still.

ADRIANA: Oh, yeah, totally. No complaints. She knows what she wants to do. So I'm like, you good. You good. Oh, that's so exciting, though. Awww, congrats. It's. It's gonna be a wild ride, but it'll be. I promise it'll be fun.

RIZEL: Thank you. I hope so. Thanks so much.

ADRIANA: Well, we are coming up on time, but as we. Before we wrap up, I wanted to see if you have any, like, parting words of wisdom or hot takes or just anything that you wanted to share with folks...advice?

RIZEL: As I will say, a lot of times people ask me like, oh, how do you like level up when you're a junior? And stuff like that. And this is probably not an answer people really like, but I think it's. It eventually comes with time and patience and just putting in work. I think I always was like, I really want to, like, level up. Like, I don't know how to do the things I'm doing, but I'm like, just continue to stay involved. There's not really. To me, there's not really a fast track. Like, as long as you continue to stay involved with your team and keep building and keep trying to learn, you'll naturally go on that, like, learning path or that growth path.

ADRIANA: That's great. I really love that. And, you know, it is so absolutely true. I mean, you gotta. You gotta put in the work. You gotta put in the face time, and. And you'll see the rewards. That's amazing.

Well, thank you so much, Rizel, for Geeking Out with me today. Y'all. Don't forget to subscribe and be sure to check the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media. Until next time...

RIZEL: Peace out and geek out.

ADRIANA: Geeking Out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Villela. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking Out is also produced by my daughter, Hannah Maxwell, who, incidentally, designed all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the socials by going to bento.me/geekingout.

The One Where We Geek Out on Observability Engineering with Iris Dyrmishi

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Adriana Villela, Hannah Maxwell, Iris Dyrmishi) — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 04:00:00 +0000

About our guest:

Iris Dyrmishi is an Observability Engineer dedicated to the belief that observability is fundamental to a company's success and the performance of its tech stack. Enthusiastic about sharing insights through speaking and writing, with a particular focus on observability and OpenTelemetry.

Find our guest on:

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show notes:

Additional notes:

KCD Porto

Transcript:

ADRIANA: Hey, fellow geeks, welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And geeking out with me today is Iris Dyrmishi. Welcome, Iris.

IRIS: Hello, Adriana, nice to be here.

ADRIANA: So happy to have you. And Iris is one of our, I would say, like On-Call Me Maybe alum, and it's been cool to be able to like bring various folks who have been on On-Call Me Maybe onto Geeking Out. So I'm super excited to have you on here. So where are you calling from today?

IRIS: I'm calling from Porto, Portugal.

ADRIANA: Awesome. Well, are you ready for our lightning round questions?

IRIS: Yes.

ADRIANA: All right, let's do it. First off, are you a lefty or a righty?

IRIS: A righty.

ADRIANA: Okay. Do you prefer iPhone or Android?

IRIS: iPhone. I used to be an Android freak until two years ago and I switched to iPhone just to try it and now I'm obsessed.

ADRIANA: Oh, you're a convert. Woo. Welcome to team iPhone. Awesome. Do you prefer Mac? Mac? Oh my God, I can't talk. Do you prefer Mac, Linux, or Windows?

IRIS: Mac all the way. Yeah, my Mac suffers a lot with me, but it's my best buddy.

ADRIANA: I feel you. The other day I think I took my Mac to the max. I have an M1 Mac, and those ones don't have fans. They never heat up. I was working outside and we're having like a mega heat wave right now in Toronto, like a heat dome. And it's been like, I think with the humidity, it's been like feeling like 40 degrees, which is outrageous. And my Mac was actually heating up on my lap and I think it was because the outside temperature was like, it was like, yo, you gotta bring me inside. So, yeah, too much, too much. Cool.

ADRIANA: Okay, next question. What is your favorite programming language?

IRIS: I would say Go. If you asked me a year ago it would be Java, but now I'm liking Go a lot. So that's my go-to language.

ADRIANA: And Go is so compact compared to Java.

IRIS: I've suffered a lot with Java, not a lot with Go, so I highly recommend to get into it. It will make your life a lot easier and everything Observability right now it's written in Go, so it's good.

ADRIANA: There you go. So it's perfect. It's funny because like you mentioning...I suffered a lot with Java, I can definitely relate because for me, I don't know if you've ever experienced this, but like every time I set up a JVM on a new machine, it always caused me problems. Or also like, some software was using whatever version of the JVM and you're writing your stuff in some other version of the JVM and they no likie each other and...

IRIS: It's crazy.

ADRIANA: Yeah. Go is very opinionated. I do appreciate that about it. Okay, next question. Do you prefer dev or ops?

IRIS: Ops. I got trained as a dev, but I started working as an ops very early in my career and I love it. Now I'll never change again.

ADRIANA: It's funny because, like, you know, a lot of times, like, there is like, you know, in school, there's...you can either, like, get a degree in computer science, computer engineering, or like, you can go to a coding camp. And so there's training for dev, right, but there's like, no training for ops. How wild is that?

IRIS: Yeah. I'm actually thinking I want to get a master's degree. I want to further my studies now, but I'm so deep into my career, into ops and doing a master's degree, it would feel just like doing it for the sake of it. There is nothing that will further my knowledge in the ops field. It's crazy. I'm really trying to find a good program, but it's just impossible. It's either game development or back end development or for example, machine learning, which are, of course, good skills to have. But if you are doing that degree to improve what you're currently doing, it's, it's impossible. You cannot find anything with ops, especially Observability, of course, but, yeah, in general. Yeah.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I know, right? Yeah, you need like an Observability camp.

IRIS: We should make it happen.

ADRIANA: I know, right? There you go. There's. There's the idea of the day. Okay, next question. Do you prefer JSON or YAML?

IRIS: YAML. I work a lot in infrastructure with YAML, and right now I can debug it with a clear eye without even needing anything. Like, I can see. Ah, there's a problem. It is the problem with the indentation. But, you know, I'm so used to it now, how it's supposed to look that it's very. It comes very easy to me.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I was gonna say, like, being so, so heavily invested in the ops side of things. Like YAML, YAML, Go, is like part of the ops toolkit these days. Okay. Spaces or tabs?

IRIS: Spaces. I feel like I have more control over the spaces. With tab, it's like too much. With spaces, you can do one at a time and fix things.

ADRIANA: I'm with you on that. Okay, a few more questions. Do you prefer to consume content through video or text?

IRIS: Text. Because the video, I get distracted very easily. If I'm watching a video, I'm thinking a thousand other things and I will not get the knowledge that I need. By reading, I focus and I take notes. It's much easier.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I agree. I agree. I find it, I find it really irritating when, like, I'm forced to watch a video because I can't find the answer anywhere else and then I have to sit there and sit through it in like five gillion restarts because similarly, my brain starts to, like, go in all the directions and I'm like, oh, this gave me an idea for blah. No, watch the video. Totally get it. And finally, what is your superpower?

IRIS: I would say that I get things done. I'm very crafty in life and in my work. Like, if I have something that I need to do, I do it no matter what. I find a workaround and if there is none, I'm gonna find a workaround. For the workaround, I always get things done. And that's a nice skill to have, especially in ops, but in real life as well, even like, for example, to put a picture in the wall, I don't have the tools. I always find a way. It just happens. So, yeah, it's a nice superpower to have.

ADRIANA: That is a great superpower. And it's so relevant for our line of work. I mean, for any, any line of work. But I feel like for our line of work, like, the craftiness translates to creative problem solving, especially when we are hampered for whatever reason from doing the thing. So I think that's so cool.

IRIS: And makes work and life fun. It really challenges you when you have to get crafty, so, you know, you never get bored.

ADRIANA: I agree. So hopefully I don't put you on the spot asking this, but what is an example of being crafty that, like, you're super proud of?

IRIS: Actually, yeah. One thing that I'm very crafty is like, I live in a very small apartment that I'm renting right now. So I wanted to have a very fancy office set up. So I went to Amazon, I went to Google, I went to 100 different, and I bought the small pieces here and there. And I have made like three screens. Beautiful, like amazing, comfortable. You know, it's like without spending too much money. And I'm very proud of it because it was like, okay, I got this in a bargain from Amazon. I got this from there and just put it together. And without the space, it still is, like, a great place to work. And it's, like, my creative space. It's more of a home project, but, yeah, I feel proud of it.

ADRIANA: Oh, that's so cool. And, you know, like, having a cool space where you can, you know, let the creative juices flow is so important because you got to be, like, comfortable where you're working, right?

IRIS: Absolutely. And, yeah, I have my beautiful screens. You know, I look like a hacker in the movies. You know, when I was a kid, I used to watch, I was like, wow, that's so cool.

ADRIANA: It's funny because, like, you know, you mentioning, like, you. You creating, like, a nice little workspace for yourself, you know, like, thinking back to the days of working in the. In an office. Right? And I don't know if you had a similar experience, but I did go through a phase where, like, I had a nice large cubicle that I decorated and stuff, and then the company I was working at, like, moved to, like, bench seating. So it's like, you have enough space for, you know, like, your monitors, your keyboard, and maybe some extra stuff and, like, a little drawer under your desk. And it's a very sort of in, impersonal workspace at that point.

IRIS: Yeah. For me, it was always working in this open spaces that you can sit wherever you want and you have a monitor, then you can plug it in, but every time you sit somewhere else, it's never personal. So I like to have my own space to organize it how I want to have, like, a microphone here to buy little things and decorate it. It just brings pleasure. And I work fully remote now, so it's great solution to have, like, this nice little space.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah. And that's the thing. I think that's what's really nice about working remotely, is that you can kind of craft your own little working corner and get it just the way you like it. And I love seeing people's different setups for remote work. Like, some people, like, do really cool lights and stuff, or, like, you know, they'll do the mechanical keyboards, or they'll invest in, like, you know, three monitors, three external monitors, and it's like, oh, my God, this is so cool. Things that, you know, we wouldn't necessarily have that at an office without, like, you know, going through whatever process to, like, request extra monitors. And they'd be like, why do you need all this extra crap?

IRIS: Yeah, I bet they cannot give me a blanket that my cats can sleep next to me. That's what I have as a Christmas gift, we got a blanket from Miro, and my cats love it. So they take turns coming there. I'm working, they're purring. It's perfect stress control. I cannot get it anywhere else.

ADRIANA: And being able to work with your cats because, like, you, you hear a lot of, like, offices that are like, dog friendly and, and because of the nature of cats, I mean, I don't, I don't.

IRIS: They cannot be together.

ADRIANA: Yeah, well, that's the other thing. Yeah, they can't be together. And also, I doubt people would want to bring their cats to the office because the cat would be like, what are you doing to me?

IRIS: They like to escape as well. So, yeah, it's not a good idea. You can have them at home, but nowhere else.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah. Fair enough. Fair enough. Well, all right, well, thank you for answering the lightning round questions. And now we shall get into the meaty bits. And, you know, one thing that I love chatting with you about is Observability. And that's how we got connected in the first place is we got connected on Observability when we brought you on to On-Call Me Maybe, and hearing about your Observability journey on there. And it's been really cool to see you as a more active participant of the OpenTelemetry community, which has been awesome.

And getting to meet you in person at KubeCon in Paris a few months back, that was so cool. But yeah, I mean, talk about your Observability journey, how it started for you. And now I think when we talked On-Call Me Maybe you were at a different company. So this is like your second Observability role. So if you don't mind sharing your journey and how different it is, like, going, you know, like now being in your second Observability role.

IRIS: So, yeah, a lot has changed in the past year. I remember when I participated in On-Call Me Maybe I was so insecure when I was talking about it because I had been in a while in Observability, but I was still, like, building my position, my skills. And now one year later, I changed company. I'm currently working at Miro, doing Observability there and I can see how much I have evolved. Like, I have become not only good at Observability and knowing how it works, another superpower. I would say that if you wake me up at 2:00 a.m. in the morning, I usually am not very coherent when someone wakes me up. But if you ask me an Observability question, I'm gonna answer that.

ADRIANA: I love that.

IRIS: So, yeah, my passion has reached that point.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

IRIS: But, yeah, now I'm not just like a person building Observability, but I'm also advocating for it a lot. I like to think that in my team, I've advocated for a lot of good technologies of improving Observability and getting to the best possible and getting more engaged with the community. And it has been a great ride. I'm actually not just doing Observability now, but also kind of working more on architecture level to put all the pieces together. So I feel like my journey in Observability has been great, and I'm looking forward to see what is going to bring more and how it's going to advance my career. I plan to be on Observability for a very long time because I really, really like it.

ADRIANA: I love that so much. Yeah. I love your Observability advocacy because it's so infectious. And I've seen, too, that we've had you a bunch of times for end user discussion panels for you giving your feedback as an end user to the OpenTelemetry end user sig. And if I recall correctly, we also had you for OTel Q&A for the End User SIG. And even, I think we even did OTel in Practice, right?

IRIS: Oh, yeah, yeah. We were talking about Observability as a sport, I remember.

ADRIANA: Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah. So we're like, yeah. Because after I met you, I'm like, we must have you for the OTel End Users. So you've been such a great proponent of Observability. And I've seen also, like, got a blog on Medium as well where you, where you write about Observability. And it's so cool. I love seeing that. I love seeing the passion. What is it about Observability that, like, gets you so excited that, you know, for you is like, this is the it thing in my life.

IRIS: Well, it honestly started at something that was so new, I had never heard about it before. Like, not in school, not in work, in companies. It's like something so new. I'm like, okay, I need to learn about it. And the more I learned, I understood how important it is for a company. And it made me wonder why not many other companies have it or are building it at the time when I started my career. So I really got into it and I saw that it's like an industry that is moving so fast. It's becoming so modern, and it always has the best practices if you know how to apply them.

So it always keeps me on my feet, always wanting to improve, always wanting to learn more. Yeah, it's great. It becomes a little bit addictive wanting to know more. I stay on LinkedIn, for example, or on Medium, and I find these great articles use cases and it's just fascinating all the time. It never gets boring, basically.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I totally agree. And I think all aspects of tech Observability just keeps evolving and it's been really interesting to see it evolve over the last little while. And especially with OpenTelemetry. How would you say your experience has been with OpenTelemetry? Like when you started using it versus like now?

IRIS: So when I started, you know, it was something very new for me and of course the community had contributed a lot, but still, it was like finding the unknowns and it took a little bit of getting used to. The documentation was not, not the best. So that's why I even started my, my blog. At the moment, maybe it was just me not being able to put the pieces together, but now it has changed a lot. I see that the community is a lot more involved. We have a lot more exporters, receivers, processors, makes your job a lot easier. And I see that it's always like the maintainers are doing a great job, always keeping on top of everything. For example, we had that security vulnerability some weeks ago.

Yeah. And it was solved immediately. So it's no longer two years ago, maybe even one year ago, people were skeptical to use it because, oh, it's so new. Things are not as well. Now it is the technology to use it. So many vendors are also making it a crucial part of their solution that they're offering. So it's really become that. It's a huge transition from we're skeptical to use it to yes, let's use it, let's find someone who knows how to do it, let's find someone to instruct us how to do it properly.

And that's one of the things that I'm very proud of achieving in Miro and in Farfetch'd. Because in Farfetch when...actually a funny story because when we were in KubCon, they showed the companies that are active participants or that are using OpenTelemetry. And I saw both Farfetch's and Miro and I feel kind of proud because I was an advocate in both cases. But yeah, one year ago and now, and it's a huge difference, but it was always a good technology and you could always see the future and how much premise that it had. Yeah, I am a big fan of OpenTelemetry, and I can talk about it all day as well.

ADRIANA: One thing that I wanted to ask is, I remember, like, when you were at Farfetch, one thing that, like, really struck me was that it had this culture of Observability already, which for me was like, oh, my God, it's like Observability nirvana. Because they were, like, really wanting the team to, like, they wanted the whole organization to implement Observability practices. And I remember you saying that. I think when we chatted for Q&A that there was a directive that it wasn't, you know, developers had to instrument their own code, which near and dear to my heart. How do you compare that to where you're at, at Miro? Did you walk into a similar Observability culture? Is that something that you were kind of brought in to do to start building up that Observability culture? How did it compare?

IRIS: I think that I entered in Miro with the same Observability need and culture, but I think that my role actually, during my interview process, I actually interviewed them as well about how Observability works. Because since I'm so passionate being brought to a place that just having the Observability title and not actually doing what it is would not make sense. But, yeah, when I entered, I realized that it actually has that culture as well. They just needed more people to advocate more and to make it bigger, a bigger movement. And at the moment, we are in that stage. That Observability is one of the main initiatives in the company. Still the same. Everybody owns, instruments their code, owns their alerting, owns their dashboard.

So I'm very happy with that. I think that we're doing it correctly even here. Yeah, even now that we have more experience with the community as well. It's a great movement in Miro as well with the Observability. I'm very, very happy with that. And we're also collaborating a bit more here with other teams, for example, with performance. OpenTelemetry is helping both of us, and we're pushing it together forward. So it's a great movement.

ADRIANA: That's so cool having that culture that you're, you're walking into. And I, you know, you, you mentioned something that's so important that, you know, you interviewed them as well, because, I mean, I've always been a huge proponent, proponent of the philosophy that, you know, when you're interviewing a job, it's not just them interviewing you it's you interviewing them because you need to make sure it's a good fit for you as well. Right? Because there's nothing worse than walking into, you know, a complete shit show, unbeknownst to you, because you didn't ask the right questions. And I, and making sure that you knew what kind of work you wanted to do and making sure that you could continue doing that work, I think is really, really important. And I think career wise, we all deserve to find our little corner where we can be happy with our jobs. Yeah, I can't underscore that enough. It's so awesome that you ask those questions. Now, in terms of the Observability practice, what is the main functionality of your team?

IRIS: So my team, we are currently having a fully open source Observability platform. We have built the logging pipeline. Tracing pipeline metrics, pipeline visualization. We usually use Grafana, open source kibana. So basically we build everything from scratch. And of course we help teams for alerting to build. Alerting to build their instrumentation. Advice on best practices.

Usually we don't touch the code. I personally, I haven't done backend coding in so long that even if I wanted, I couldn't go and just like in a matter of days, get into it and help instrument. I wouldn't, I wouldn't be able to. But, yeah, usually in this part, we're advisory and just maintaining the main stack, improving it, making it better in general. Now we're actually moving, making the big move to OpenTelemetry. We finished with tracing. We're working with every everything else. So, yeah, it's basically always evolving from one place to the other to provide the best tools.

ADRIANA: Nice. And how has it gone in terms of getting people into using OpenTelemetry? Was it something...because, I mean, it's already like, it sounds like an Observability centered organization. However, like, what were they using before for before OpenTelemetry.

IRIS: So for the main reason why we went into the OpenTelemetry or how we were able to sell it, let's say, was tracing. We were using Jaeger and tracing those pillars. That was kind of the forgotten child. I went there and I was like, tracing, tracing, tracing, talking about it all the time. It's actually a running joke right now in the team as well. They're like, yeah, yeah, tracing. Yes, it's tracing. So we have now he's our senior manager, but he used to be a staff engineer in the team still working actively with us.

He said, okay, let's push it forward. Let's have OpenTelemetry and tracing become the pillar that people didn't really care about. They saw that when we had OpenTelemetry, we could handle a lot more. Some change their instrumentation and they could see a lot more information during incidents. So it was kind of selling it. By showing what a good thing tracing was and how OpenTelemetry helped, it became easier to say, especially to upper management, that, hey, this is a great tool. See what we can do with this. And for the engineers, actually, it was very easy.

Once they saw how much of a potential tracing was, they understood that other pillars will be equally useful. So, yeah, it's now it's our main, main tool that we are planning to use for our Observability needs. So it's very, very good. And when I joined in November in the team, there were some small talks about OpenTelemetry, but we were saying, oh, maybe later, maybe later. And then we were like, tracing is good, OpenTelemetry is great. Sharing articles every day about something that happened in the community. And in January, we had already migrated traces, so in two months we already managed to turn some mindset around.

ADRIANA: Oh, that's so amazing. How cool. And so I guess people didn't have too much trouble implementing, like instrumenting their code using OpenTelemetry. Like, was there any, was there any education on your part or your team's part where you had to kind of direct them, as you said, not instrument their code for them, but explain, like, this is how you approach it, these are your best practices?

IRIS: Yeah, we're doing it constantly, and we're really taking advantage of the OpenTelemetry instrumentation, the libraries that already are and the documents that are already there. Usually the team did most of the work, but we do have, for example, a monolith. And some, of course, applications are very sensitive because we have a lot of users that use our product live 24 hours, depending on where they are on. So it was a bit sensitive. So I would say that, yes, we've done some instructions and sharing documentations and inspiring mostly, but yeah, the engineers, the backend engineers have done their work in instrumenting. We're still not 100% there. There are some applications that have been instrumented, some not, but the mindset have shifted and everyone want to do it, but the priorities are different for everyone. So that's why it's good to have support from management always.

So they're the ones that are pushing this forward, where you cannot be always going to someone and telling, please, instrument, instruments from instrument, you know, it needs to be like a bigger movement that comes from a bit higher than us.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think, I think that's really key. I mean, yes, the individual contributors are the ones who are going to do the work, but if they don't feel like their support from up above, what's in it for me, like, versus, you're gonna do this.

IRIS: Yeah, because we have roadmaps plans that we need to follow. We can just be like, oh, the Observability wants this. Let's do it.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah.

IRIS: It needs to go through the right channels.

ADRIANA: So are you finding...

IRIS: Sorry, no, I said, especially in big companies, that is like a lot of hierarchy.

ADRIANA: Yeah, that's so true. That's so true. And, yeah, and that's really important to keep in mind as well. The thing I was going to ask you is, are you noticing like benefits already from the instrumentation?

IRIS: Yes, we could see, we have some applications that have spans with 40,000 traces, with 40,000 spans, for example, and they get the level of information that they get now, it's a lot more detailed and troubleshooting is a lot easier. You can already see the issue. So because we are also testing our grounds with different vendors and how the information can be sent there and can be shown to our engineers, because of course, the open source backends can do a lot, but can only do so much. And yeah, we've shown a lot of value from the OpenTelemetry instrumentation together with the help from vendors and their support, obviously. Yeah, it's been amazing. You can really see a difference on the amount of information that is being shown and how easy it has been to troubleshoot to the point that we've been using OpenSearch as a backend right now, while we still have OpenTelemetry and even dashboards were built on spans because it has more information than metrics at some point.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah.

IRIS: So, yeah, in a way or another, good or bad, it has provided a lot more than we had before.

ADRIANA: That's awesome. And, you know, when you're...because that one thing that I get from a lot of folks is some people get like, very overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data. So how do you, like, how can you tell when, when there's an issue, how are you able to narrow in on the actual issue amongst the sea of spans? Because, like, you have the information, but how do you know where to look?

IRIS: Yeah, it's usually seeing the status codes of the span, seeing the duration. That's very manual, to be honest, until now, especially with, we're still using Jaeger UI and it doesn't provide a lot of, for example, you can search by tags, you can see where the error happened or which of the spans had the biggest duration, and maybe it will pinpoint you the right direction. But yeah, we're looking at solutions that are a little bit more better. For example, some architecture overviews, let's say, of the application and the spans, which is more obvious rather than you going and scrolling it just shows it right there. We're focusing mostly because the visualization layer is only so much that we can do in terms of open source. So we want to kind of leverage another tool to do that for us. So we're focusing on getting, transporting the right data there so it is shown properly and it makes it easier for our engineers to troubleshoot.

ADRIANA: Cool. So then that means again, you're taking advantage of like the OpenTelemetry superpower through the Collector, where you can send the same data to multiple sources, right?

IRIS: It's a lifesaver. If anyone is listening to this and they're wondering if they should use OpenTelemetry, it's amazing. You don't even have to touch your current architecture and you can leave it running on production and you can have a full separate better one running on the side just by using OpenTelemetry. And at the same time you are building this amazing architecture and you can decommission the old one without your users even noticing anything. It's amazing.

ADRIANA: Yeah, that's awesome. I love that so much about OpenTelemetry is the flexibility. Another thing that I want to ask you about is Collector usage. How do you end up having a bunch of different Collectors? If you're able to talk about that, what's the Collector setup that you work with?

IRIS: Well, I can talk about it. We're currently, because our metrics and logging are still not there yet. We're still working on it. But yeah, we already have a deployment, but we're already deploying a daemon set on all our Kubernetes clusters to collect all our information and probably running another deployment as well. The plan is always to use because of the amount of data. It's a very big company. We even want to use one Collector per Observability pillar. One for tracing, one for logging, one for metrics.

It will just make it easier for us to know where the issue is and it will not be a single point of failure, for example, if something happens, because it could, we don't want all our signals to be down. So it's good to keep them separate. So yeah, we're leveraging everything, deployments, daemon sets, everything that's in there.

ADRIANA: Awesome. Yeah, and I agree. I think that's great that you're doing like different Collectors per signal because exactly of what you said, like you. And also I think it makes it a little bit easier to kind of like manage the data, you know, so you can isolate problems if you run into problems. And so like it sounds then like you're running most of your Collectors out of Kubernetes. Are you using the OTel Operator for that?

IRIS: Not yet. It's in the plans, but not yet. I'm a big fan of the OTel Operator. Currently we're just using the Collector, the normal Collector.

ADRIANA: Oh, okay. Gotcha, gotcha. Yeah, I find the Operator very exciting and I remember discovering it by accident and I'm a huge fan and I try to contribute to documentation around the Operator whenever I learn something new.

IRIS: Yeah, yeah. In my mind and I think in our plans, I think we in the team are in sync when it comes to this. We want to use everything that OpenTelemetry has offered and whatever it is building, including the Operator, auto instrumentation, which is great and makes life easier for everyone. So yeah, it's a process, of course, because it's a big company and things that will be slowly. But yeah, we're going to use all of it and we're preparing for all of it. Yeah.

ADRIANA: And actually you mentioned auto instrumentation. What it is, are you contending with like, are there multiple languages for like the applications at your company and if so, then like are you taking advantage? Are the languages available, the ones that have like auto instrumentation, like built in.

IRIS: The main languages that we're using? Yes, there are some corner cases that are not, but we're already preparing to create our own instrumentation there, maybe even contributed to open source or if we think that it's not good enough, just have it still use auto instrumentation, but with our own library, the in house.

ADRIANA: Cool. That's awesome. And for the auto instrumentation, because one piece of feedback that I've heard from some folks who are using auto instrumentation is usually around, like sometimes it spews out too much information. Has that been the case for like, is that something that you've experienced or you, are you satisfied so far with the amount of data?

IRIS: Yeah, currently we're preparing for it, but we're not using. But I did use it in my previous company and we were very satisfied with the amount of data. We didn't really have issues. We did see that, for example, some information was collected twice, once by our current infrastructure that we hadn't decommissioned yet, and once by the OpenTelemetry Collector. So it became a bit overwhelming. But that wasn't really the, the library's fault. It was us trying to figure out how the data, like, what to decommission and whatnot without causing any incidents to our consumers. But yes, so far from my experience with it, I haven't had any issues in the amount of data.

ADRIANA: And what about. Because you said you're mostly focused on traces, so I'm assuming there's like some plans to bring in metrics, I would assume metrics. Next store. Is it logs? Are you planning on logs at all?

IRIS: Like, we're actually doing both. We're doing everything at the same time. So, yeah, the whole team is actually. Yeah, we are in a big movement. I'm very proud to say that, that our team is like, in the movement to modernize and to use the latest technologies and OpenTelemetry is it. So we are putting a lot of strength and a lot of manpower into it, doing investigations, thinking what to do, how to roll it out. It's a movement.

ADRIANA: And have you found yourself in the position where, like, you know, you need some guidance from folks in OTel on how to implement this? Or like, found an issue with an implementation, like, have you, and if so, what have you done to resolve that?

IRIS: Yeah, I've had issues, actually. I think it was a few weeks ago, I had some issues that I couldn't find the solution of, but I just searched on Google. That's my first place. I only searched on Google. And I think I went on a forum, an OpenTelemetry forum. Somebody else had had the issue and it was resolved. And it usually, I'm up to date because I am usually on the groups of, in Slack channels in OTel Collector.

So I read everything that happens there and I see all the errors. So if it's something interesting, it usually gets stuck in my mind. And if it happens to me, I'm like, wait, I've seen this. I know that it's. Yeah, it's so many users right now that it's very difficult to find issues that nobody else has had before that you are not able to. So that's another thing that I like very much right now. It makes your job easier, especially when you are trying to work fast and not spend like days and days investigating something. There's always an answer out there.

ADRIANA: Yeah, that's so true. I had a similar experience last week where I was trying to update some stuff in the Otel operator, there's a new version of for the Collector CR and, but there was like no documentation around it. So I'm like, and I'm like, I was trying to convert my YAML right to this, to this updated format and it was not working. And I'm like googling all over the place. I'm like, ah, crap, I'm gonna have to start. I'm gonna have to post a question on the operator channel. And like, and folks on the operator channel are super nice. So, you know, it's not that.

It was more like I didn't want to waste their time on something that like, has already been asked before. So I'm like, as a last ditch effort, I started searching their slack for like my one particular keyword and I'm like, oh my God. And I found someone had opened like a GitHub issue on that. I'm like, oh my God. I have the example I'm looking for. Thank goodness. And I was so happy. I'm like, yeah, I mean, the slack channels, honestly, like, there's so much info on there. It's great, it's great. Yeah.

IRIS: I love the community. OpenTelemetry community. I've never seen anything rude happening. Maybe there is very good admins as well, I don't know, but it's always very helpful. It's a great community to be in because I have been in other communities as well. And sometimes you're kind of afraid to post and ask because you will get judged. It doesn't, I haven't seen that happen here.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I agree. I'm scared every time I post a question. But everyone is always so nice regardless. Like, train my brain to like, stop. Chill out, man.

IRIS: Yeah.

ADRIANA: I've never like, on a pull request, I've never had anybody be absolutely nasty to me. Like, it's always very like polite things, even when like, you know, I completely misunderstand the concept. It's like, well, let me clarify for you, which is super nice, right?

IRIS: I had a situation actually a few weeks ago, a few months, honestly, I say weeks, but it could be a few months that I was just looking for tasks to contribute in documentation. So I said, I wrote that, okay, I'm going to do this. But at the moment I was busy, so I didn't have time. And someone else, the admin technologies and someone else posted the MR and they're like, okay, I did it now. And they actually tagged me and they said, Iris, are you comfortable with moving through with the, with their MR? You were the one who posted first. And we need to respect that you were actually volunteering and that was so nice. I know it was not with malicious intent by the other person that did the MR. Probably they saw the task and they did it without following the instructions.

But it was very nice by the admins to just check with me to make sure that things are done properly. That made me very, very happy. I'm like, okay, yeah, this is a great community to be in.

ADRIANA: Oh, that's such a nice story. I love that so much. And you know, like especially with the docs folks, they're so nice like, you know, it's very like because they have to walk a fine line, right. Of like making sure that you don't post anything that's vendor specific. So like they've, they've got to find, follow all these rules and ensure that you're following these rules and make sure that it's a respectful community. So I really appreciate, you know, the docs, maintainers do such a nice job of that generally of I've never seen, I've never had a negative experience and it's so nice to hear a story like that as well. I wanted to ask, because you're mentioning like contributing to docs, is there any other area where you've contributed to OpenTelemetry?

IRIS: No, I'm actually working on a project. I have started it for months now and I, because currently the Kafka receiver is for logging. It is only accepting the OTLP format. So I want to, I started to work with it maybe to make it compatible with some other formats because of personal reasons, personal professional that I need to do at my work. And we really wanted to make use of that, but it was impossible to have OTLP logging everywhere. So yeah, I'm working with that. But I haven't really made a lot of progress. Yeah, I'm a little bit slow on the contribution stage.

I like, I tell myself to feel better. Okay, you write blogs. It's okay, it's okay. It's some kind of contribution. You speak about it, some kind of contribution. But it's my goal that I want to be a very active contributor because I getting so much from the community and from work that other people are doing. So I'd like to give something back as well. So that's why I'm like practicing my goal skills to make good contributions.

So yeah, hopefully soon.

ADRIANA: Oh, it's so exciting. Yay. Yeah, that's great. And I think that's a really important point to underscore too because I think because OpenTelemetry has the backing of most of the major Observability vendors. It's kind of assumed that it means that those folks will be contributing. And I think a lot of vendors have dedicated teams that work on Otel because it's in their vested interest and it's in the community's best vested interest. But then there's the other side too, which is like the end users making contributions. And I think that's an important story to tell as well because, you know, ultimately the end users are the ones who are, who are using OpenTelemetry.

And so to have those contributions and making sure that there's a path in your organization to make those contributions as well is so super important because, you know, it sounds to me like there's no issue in like Miro letting you contribute to OpenTelemetry. But I know also like in, in some companies, like even just allowing developers contribute to open source is such a difficult process. Right.

IRIS: That's very interesting actually. I've never come across a situation like this because open source is open source. But yeah, I can imagine that there is cases like that.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I think like the very corporate places like banks and stuff can be very, very protective of open source contributions. Not because like they don't dig it. I think it's more from like security concerns and so whatever, whatever concerns that they have around that. So it's just nice, and it's, it's nice working in a place where that obviously security concerns are concerns for everyone, but it's nice to work at a place where there are low barriers for contributing to open source.

IRIS: Yeah. The way I see it, if you are using open source, then you should be allowed to contribute to open source. Because even for example, if you build, let's say an OpenTelemetry receiver, something new that hasn't been done before and you want to contribute it to the community. I don't, I really don't see how that could be a concern to just keep it for, for yourself because you are already using code that is public. You know, this is going to be public as well. I don't understand.

ADRIANA: But yeah, yeah, I agree with you and that's a really important point. Like you're using the open source like you're benefiting from other people's work. And so, you know, you should, I'm not saying like everybody has to contribute to open source, but at least make it like if you're an organization and you are benefiting from open source, don't make it such a huge barrier for contributing, to allow your, your employees to contribute back to the tools that they are taking advantage of.

IRIS: Absolutely.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I know we are coming up on time. So as we wrap up, I wanted to ask if there are any words of wisdom or hot takes that you would like to share with our audience.

IRIS: Well, I would like to speak to all the engineers in the companies that they should be a little bit nicer to their Observability engineers.

ADRIANA: I love it.

IRIS: We want to collect all the data, but unfortunately, it's very expensive. It's very difficult to process it. Also, sometimes we have to make decisions to collect some, to drop some, and to put guidelines in place. Trust me, we want to collect everything, but we just cannot. So be nice to your Observability engineers and cooperate, and you're going to build an amazing Observability platform.

ADRIANA: That's awesome. And that's a really excellent point. Remember the humans behind the work that is being done. It's not just magic. It feels like magic, but it's not. That is super awesome. Well, thank you so much, Iris, for geeking out with me today. Y'all don't forget to subscribe and be sure to check the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media. Until next time...

IRIS: Peace out and geek out.

ADRIANA: Geeking Out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Villela. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking Out is also produced by my daughter, Hannah Maxwell, who, incidentally, designed all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the socials by going to bento.me/geekingouthe.

The One Where We Geek Out on Tech with Carmen Huidobro

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Adriana Villela, Hannah Maxwell, Carmen Huidobro) — Tue, 10 Sep 2024 04:00:00 +0000

About our guest:

Carmen Huidobro (she/her) is a developer advocate and dev education enthusiast originally from Chile and based in Austria. She thrives on lifting others up in their tech careers and loves a good CSS challenge. Always excited to talk about teaching tech, especialmente en Español, oder auf Deutsch.

Find our guest on:

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show notes:

Additional notes:

Transcript:

ADRIANA: Hey, fellow geeks! Welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And geeking out with me today is Carmen Huidobro. Welcome, Carmen.

CARMEN: Thank you so much for having me. Hey everybody, all listeners. It's an absolute joy to be here.

ADRIANA: I am so excited to have you on. And, you know, it's really cool how I got you on the podcast was because I think Marino Wijay did a shoutout of, like, all amazing people that should...he did a Tweet about like, oh, these are some awesome people that you should totally have on your podcast. I'm like, awesome. And your name was on there. And so I replied to that tweet. I'm like, anyone on that list, like, let me know. DM me. You can be on the podcast.

CARMEN: Honestly, like, I'm so grateful to Marino and also you for, like, laying down that growndwork. I don't know what was what I was thinking that day. I was feeling like, oddly bold. Is like, because I saw, I saw your post and I was like, you know what? I am going to reach out to her and just sort of like, very bravely be like, hey, I'd love to.

ADRIANA: I am so glad that you did. I love it when, when people take me up on, on my offer. So.

CARMEN: Yeah, no, I appreciate it.

ADRIANA: Yay. Well, as, as we start off, are you ready for the lightning round lightning slash not really lightning round questions?

CARMEN: Awesome. Let's go.

ADRIANA: Okay. All right, first question. Are you a lefty or a righty?

CARMEN: I'm a righty, but I was born a lefty. But, like, so I was growing up in Chile at the time, and my....so, like, my grandmother did not like it and she was, like, forcing me to, like, try and, like, write with my right hand. So, like, I do some stuff sort of lefty, but, like, 90% righty.

ADRIANA: Oh, okay. So your, like, brain was retrained on, on the rightiness. Ooh, cool, cool. Yeah, my mom. I'm a lefty. My mom was also a lefty. And she was forced to do things left-handed [NOTE: should be right-handed] by some angry nuns. And she...but she was like one of those, like, you can't take the lefty out of me. And she just couldn't, like, as much as the nuns tried to do it, she just. Nope, not. Not happening.

CARMEN: So they try. And they tried to train her out of being a lefty, right?

ADRIANA: They did. They did. And it did not work. Yeah, they...Because I think, like, she would hold her fork with her left hand, and they're like, nope. And so. So they make her sit in the cafeteria trying to eat with her right hand.

CARMEN: Yeah.

ADRIANA: And if she didn't, she would, like, either not eat or whatever, like, if there was some sort of punishment or I think she missed recess because she was stuck at the cafeteria, like, trying to eat with her right hand. And so she was, like, thoroughly traumatized. So for her, it was like, almost. Almost like the visceral reaction of, like, nope, I'm a lefty for life on all the things.

CARMEN: Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, kind of. I mean, I wasn't at school when they were doing this, but, like, my...my grandmother was very, very adamant about, like, nope, she has to be a righty.

ADRIANA: Thou shalt be righty. All right, next question. Do you prefer iPhone or Android?

CARMEN: You know, I alternate because I'm undecided and boring. But I started out as a Mac developer, so, like, there is a sort of, like, propensity to stick with, like, Apple products. So I'm currently on an iPhone 12 Mini, and I'm kind of annoyed about it because, like, it's the last...no, it's the second last mini they made, and I have small hands. I don't understand why phone manufacturers don't like people with small hands. Bring back the Mini.

ADRIANA: I know. I love the size of the Mini.

CARMEN: Right? So, like, yeah, I. And I have to get a new phone soon because this one's starting to run out of battery and, like, I don't know what to get. How about you?

ADRIANA: I am...I've had an iPhone since the 3GS.

CARMEN: No way. That was my first phone.

ADRIANA: Yeah. Yeah. So before that I had a BlackBerry, and before that I had an LG Chocolate, which I adored. It was one of those, like, do you remember the slider phones?

CARMEN: Yeah, totally.

ADRIANA: And, like, you know, they became, like, really popular because of the Matrix. And it was like, it was cute. It looked like a little candy bar. It was, like, tiny in your hand. And I adored that phone. And then, you know, blackberries came out, and I loved my BlackBerry until it started to spontaneously shut off in the middle of phone calls. And then I got really angry, and so we. We retaliated and bought iPhones.

CARMEN: Fair enough. Fair enough. I had a Motorola Razr. I don't know if you're familiar, like.

ADRIANA: Oh, my God, those were beautiful.

CARMEN: I love those. I miss it, honestly.

ADRIANA: Yeah. Yeah. Those were beautiful phones. I mean, even, like, it's predecessor, like, you remember the StarTAC?

CARMEN: Oh, my God. Yes.

ADRIANA: Like, I mean, at the time, I'm like, oh, my God, this is like the coolest phone ever. You know, especially, like, I carried around this. It was like a Sanyo brick phone, which at the time was like, oh, this is so tiny compared to those, like, really big ass phones that fortunately I never had.

CARMEN: Oh, yeah.

ADRIANA: I'm not that old.

CARMEN: Oh, gosh.

ADRIANA: Phone memory lane. Awesome. Okay, next question. Do you prefer Mac, Linux, or Windows?

CARMEN: So I recently, like, I like to...so I have a PC that I built back in 2018. Like the first PC I ever built, and I love it to bits, but it was getting too slow. So I did something very, very wild for me, which, I mean, it doesn't sound that wild. I installed a liquid cooler into it, right. Which is a lot more, which is a lot more complex than it sounds. It's really just sort of like, you know, doing, putting in some parts and plugging stuff in. It wasn't nearly like, as complex as it sounds.

CARMEN: But what that means is that, oh, my gosh, I'm motivated to work on my PC again. So I got on back on Linux and I missed it. Honestly, I'm really enjoying working on Linux right now. But I started out as a Mac developer, so it has a soft spot in my heart. Windows exists. I use it, you know.

ADRIANA: Yeah. I feel, you know, I. It's funny, I have Windows PTSD because I used it for so long.

CARMEN: Yeah.

ADRIANA: And in, under such corporate settings that I have, like, this very negative association with Windows, even though, like, Windows was my...I guess my first operating system was DOS, but Windows was my first, I guess, like proper GUI...yeah...OS. I just, I cannot, like, you know, I should feel some nostalgia for it, but I honestly, I feel PTSD for it. And Macs kind of represent, like, you know, phase two of my career where I've, like, it's the enlightenment of my career where I've moved away from the corporate-y mindset.

CARMEN: Oh, I so feel you because I'm actually in that right now. I...last...no, earlier this year, I started consulting with an SAP consultancy. Do you know SAP?

ADRIANA: My husband works in SAP? Like that. That is his career. Yes, yes, yes. Like 20...I want to say 28 years doing SAP. Like, ABAP performance tuning. Like, that is his jam.

CARMEN: I mean, I don't know if you've ever taken. Absolutely. Like, I appreciate it because I'm, like, I started consulting with him, but, like, working on them, bringing sort of like, my developer relations and developer education site aspect to it. But I've also you know been picking up at ABAP and SAP GUI and all that stuff and like good golly what a completely different world that is. And like, and of course that means that I need to have a Windows machine because like you know it's completely like...what do you mean Linux? What do you mean open source? Like, you know? And like so I've been just rediscovering Windows in a corporate context and like, it hits different.

ADRIANA: It does hit different. Yep, yep, yep. But the Windows salvation is the Windows Subsystem for Linux.

CARMEN: Yes, yes. In fact like when I built my PC like a long time ago I was like you know what, I'm going to work with WSL. Like you know, Windows Subsystem for Linux. And I loved it. I still do and whatever, like whenever like I'm onboarding folks like if they're getting new to, if they're new to programming and they're like you know starting out, I love to like very, very gently...I'm not a, I'm not some kind of like adamant person who's like oh, you have to do this. But I'm definitely like, you know if you're having trouble installing node on your machine, have you heard of Windows Subsystem for Linux? You know, that sort of thing?

ADRIANA: Yeah exactly, exactly. Yeah. The last time I had a Windows machine the first thing I did was install WSL.

CARMEN: Absolutely, same here.

ADRIANA: Yeah it's, yeah I mean it's, it's, it's a whole other experience. It makes Windows a kinder, gentler.

CARMEN: Oh absolutely. And like honestly like I'm very grateful it exists because it gives folks an opportunity to you know get into programming a lot easier or like you know get antiquated...to get antiquated, is that the term? Familiar with? Yeah, acquainted. That's what I wanted to say. With, with these kind of tools that you know folks are working with on a day to day basis but like a lot more accessible. You know my...I had a client that I used to work with. I've done a ton of freelancing in my career and like one of my favorite client experiences was this was a client in gastronomy for like local businesses and like the business, the industry area of Vienna and we were doing like lunch...like you know like corporate lunch for them and stuff like the gastronomy and like catering and all that stuff. And my job was to build their POS, or point of sale system, right? And of course every, every office that they would deliver to would have a different kind of thing.

And like I was doing a lot with like thermal printers and stuff for their like receipts and stuff, you know. By the way, thermal print, you know, thermal printers, right? Like, I never occurred to me that they don't use ink, but in fact they burn the paper. Like how metal is that?

ADRIANA: I know, right?

CARMEN: It's like, oh, absolutely. And like the protocol for like printing to them like this, like the one we use was the ESC POS protocol for printing is so versatile. It's kind of cool. Anyway, and I wrote a system that like worked very nicely with like Linux and like writing to like writing over serial to the, to the USB, to the USB port on the, on the printer itself. And that was all well and cool. And then my clients like, cool, well this client has a Windows machine, so we should just...like a Windows POS...we should just do it with that. And I was like, oh yeah, no problem. I'm sure, like writing to, writing to like, you know, ports on Windows is going to be completely easy. And like 48 hours of like reading C documentation for like win DLL or something. I was like, maybe I'm not a programmer after all.

ADRIANA: Oh my God, the DLLs crap. I remember those.

CARMEN: I never, I never, I never wrote one. Like, we ended up giving up and like, I think what we ended up in doing in the end was the most like hacky thing in the world, which was like, let's just buy a Raspberry PI and send it data over wifi. And hey, it works. And that still being used to this day. Oh, yeah, yeah, no, it was great. I love that. I love...I gave a talk about that at a Ruby conference. It was a lot of fun.

ADRIANA: That's awesome. That sounds like such a great solution.

CARMEN: Oh, it's super fun.

ADRIANA: All right, next question. What's your favorite programming language?

CARMEN: Oh, no. Okay, I do have an answer. So I mentioned I started out as an Objective-C...I just gave it away. I started out as a Mac developer, and at the time, not to age myself, uh, the, the only programming language for macOS was Objective-C. And I don't know if you know Objective-C. It's weird. It's got a...it's got an odd syntax.

You send mess...like, you don't send messages using a full stop, you know, as you would like, you know, object dot method. Instead you do it with square brackets. So like, square brackets, object message, if you want to like use that as a parameter, no problem. Just surround it with more square brackets and you can end up with like an, in, like an inception of, like, several square brackets, and, like, it gets a lot of...

ADRIANA: Oh, my God.

CARMEN: And it gets a lot of criticism for having an odd syntax. It's still SmallTalk-like. But the reason it's my favorite programming language is because I now jokingly say, like, I started out in Objective-C. Nothing can hurt me now. And, like, it taught me to be flexible. It taught me to, like, appreciate, like, object orientation. Like, you know, the base, the essentials of SmallTalk and that sort of thing, and really grateful for it. But, you know, after that, I don't know. I think I associate programming languages with, like, stages of my career or my life because...

ADRIANA: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I can definitely see that. Totally.

CARMEN: So, you know, after that, I was a...Like, all of our tooling for our apps and objectives were written in Ruby because my client was a big fan of, you know, of ruby on rails. And this was, like, early 2010. And so I went into ruby on rails, and I love Ruby. Like, especially, like, the european Ruby community has such a special place in my heart that, like, I. Because, like, right after, like, getting into that, then I started feeling a little bit isolated as a. As a. As a freelancer.

And then I sort of started, like, I'm a. Okay, believe it or not, I'm a shy person. And, like, I started, like, dipping my toes into, like, going to meetups and stuff, but it was very intimidating. And, like. Like, Objective-C. I think the German language gets a bad rap because it's, like. Like, especially for, like, you know, myself. I come from, like, a romance language.

I come from Spanish. And, like, yeah, German is hard to learn, but I think it, like, I think it gets...I don't know, there's a certain beauty to its modularity, for example, that, like...

ADRIANA: I agree with you. I totally agree with you. I think German is so...German is so beautiful.

CARMEN: I agree 100%. Like, don't get me wrong, it's hard. It's got its rules. Like, you know, articles, you know, the der, die, das...like, for. For assigning to nouns is difficult.

ADRIANA: Oh, my God. Yes, yes, right?

CARMEN: I gave up.

ADRIANA: Honestly, just make shit up as you go along.

CARMEN: Look, people are gonna know what you mean, like, regardless of the language and all of that, but, like. Anyway, so the meetups were, like, super intense and very, like. I mean, you. You know, if you. If you're familiar with, like, the tech scene, especially in, like, German speaking countries, there's this. There's this, like, sort of not anarchistic per se, but there's a very, like. Like, hacker. Like, are you familiar with that sort of German hacker culture? You know, like the, they call it the demo scene.

They do, like, lots of, like, graphics and music stuff, and it's very, like, anti authoritarian and that sort of thing. And, like...

ADRIANA: Right, right. Kind of, kind of like in the Hackers movie, that kind of vibe.

CARMEN: Oh, I was a complete side note, I was at EMF camp a few weeks ago, and, like, they have a, which is like a nerdy camping event, but with WiFi and electricity and, like, all of that stuff and talks. Actually, I gave a workshop on how to get into public speaking and tech speaking at that event a few weeks ago. It was good fun. I'm not a very good camper, but regardless, they show that movie every time.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

CARMEN: And they have the director there for a Q&A, which is pretty cool.

ADRIANA: What? Yeah, I, you know, that movie has a special place in my heart. Like, my husband and my daughter hate it. I'm like, but it's so bad. It's good. Come on.

CARMEN: I thoroughly enjoyed my time watching it, but I kind of just shocked myself. Favorite programming language. So, like, Ruby. Like, I started going to the Ruby meetup and, like, very quickly got on boarded into, like, Rails Girls. Rails Girls, Summer of Code, and, like, lots of, like, you know, more sort of like humanitarian stuff related to code. And so, like, I did a lot of that with Ruby for a couple of years. And then a couple years ago, my friend and I, my friend Jess and I started teaching JavaScript and HTML and, like, you know, especially when I talk to folks who do, like, more backend or low level programming, and they go like, ugh, JavaScript is weird. And I was like, I know, isn't it great? I have a soft spot. A soft spot for it. And then, like, I started getting integrated into the Rust community. And, like, at least here in Europe, they're also wonderful. I don't know, maybe I, maybe my favorite programming languages are associated to the respective communities.

ADRIANA: I mean, and that's such a great association to make. Like, you know, you have a nice community and you feel like it inspires you to learn more because you like the people around it. Right? And I think it's funny you mentioned Ruby because I've had a number of people on the podcast who are big fans of Ruby, and... everyone talks about the Ruby community.

CARMEN: I mean, they are pretty great.

ADRIANA: Can't beat that. Can't beat that.

CARMEN: I'm curious, may I ask what's yours right now?

ADRIANA: I would say Python. So I was a longtime Java developer, 15 years. So I got on the Java bandwagon, like in the late '90s, early 2000s...so when Java was pretty new. I was like, I got onto it because my dad is, he's a retired software architect. He learned Rust for fun last year. He just made, like, we were chatting on the phone. He made his first contribution to, what is the Rust library thing called? Not the package manager. Like the library, like where people, like, where people put their, like their homegrown libraries.

CARMEN: Crates. crates.io

ADRIANA: Yes, that's it. Yes. He published his first Crate last week. I'm like, and my dad's turning 71.

CARMEN: That's amazing.

ADRIANA: So, yeah, but I got into Java because of my dad. My dad got into SmallTalk when SmallTalk was like, the thing, and then it was like, Java, Java, Java. Now he's like, Java is an anti-pattern because object-oriented programming is an anti-pattern. And then he would...he did Go for a while. Now he's like, I hate Go. Rust. Rust is where it's at.

CARMEN: I mean, you know, that's something I find so liberating about programming languages and technologies in general is that, you know, opinions come and go. Like best, best practices come and go. And like, I find being able to like, recognize patterns and like, bring over knowledge and even use that prior knowledge to challenge current knowledge. So helpful. The one I always think about is, you know, I was doing lots of Ruby on Rails and then like, I kind of missed like the major hype of single page applications. Like, I did a little bit of Backbone.js, if you're familiar, like way back when, which was like one of the first, one of the first like single page application frameworks and stuff. And then like, but when I started really getting into stuff like React and Vue and all of that, everyone's like super excited about server side rendering. It's the future.

It's here. And I'm like, wait, we stopped doing that? And, you know, like, things come and go. Like, everyone in, like, a lot of folks in like the Next.js world are super excited about like RPCs and TrPCs. And I'm like, do y'all mean remote procedure calls? Because like, don't get me wrong, they're fantastic. Like, I didn't know they were gone, you know?

ADRIANA: So true. Yeah. It is very cyclical. Yeah, I think, like, programming languages, like, you know, it's also a thing, like, the thing I hear a lot with them is like, my favorite programming language is the one that I'm using right now, which is cool. It's like, yeah, whatever. I'm down to learn new languages, because what I. It's exactly what you said. You, like, you start to recognize patterns between languages.

And I think that's one of the things that I enjoy about learning new languages is like, oh, how is the thing done in this compared to the thing done here? Right? Yeah, and, yeah, I mean, and I think it's that process of discovery and then learning the nuances and then the...this language does this so poorly. I love how this language does that, and I think that's...that's what I love. It's that discovery of programming languages for the first time. It's like falling in love for the first time.

CARMEN: Absolutely. And then that excitement of, like, how something is done, and then you bring it back to your programming language. One of my favorites is when Objective-C introduced blocks, which are anonymous functions, right? And subjectively, the syntax is pretty gnarly for them. Like, I know, like, what are the...what are the...what's that sign....the...the little arrow that goes, is it a caret? The one that goes....

ADRIANA: Yeah, the yeah, right, yeah, like that. Right?

CARMEN: Yeah, but it's. It's. It's upwards.

ADRIANA: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's.

CARMEN: Yeah, I think that's a caret as well. Could be wrong, but I think it is a caret. Yeah, yeah, most, I think so. Yeah. But, like, it's. It's pretty garly. It involves one of those. It involves ampersands. It involves, like, like, curly bracket. It's pretty, like, doesn't...curly brackets doesn't sound that bad. But anyway, it's pretty weird. So much so that for a very long time, I looked it up recently. It doesn't exist anymore. There was a website called effing blocks, which all of its purpose is to remind folks how to do block syntax in Objective-C because it was that weird. And I love that. That sort of, like, not spite per se, but like, that sort of joyful, like, oh, God, I need to reach for it again. Sort of thing that I just find.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love stuff like that.

CARMEN: Yeah.

ADRIANA: There's a place that I can go to to remind me how to do x.

CARMEN: Absolutely.

ADRIANA: I'm all for it.

CARMEN: Awesome.

ADRIANA: Okay, our next question. Do you prefer Dev or Ops?

CARMEN: Ooh. So I've spent most of my careers in dev, so, like, my heart will always be in dev, but, like, I've recently started dipping my toes more and more into ops. And, like, I have a very, very solid appreciation for it. And, like, again, I'm gonna sound like a broken record. Y'all are so nice like, the community is so sweet and I just like inviting. Like, I spoke at my, my first DevOps event last year. It was a DevOps DevOps Days New York and it was just such an incredible event. And folks are so, like open minded and like inviting and like, so thoughtful and so provocative in a good way as well.

Like, I really enjoyed my time there and I feel like I'm learning a lot. It's like, it's just like rediscovering a new aspect of career. It's kind of like picking up a new programming language. Like, you're just sort of like picking up new things. And like, I think there's a lot of consideration and considerable work being done there that, like, I'm finding myself really drawn to.

ADRIANA: Yeah, that, that's such a great way of putting it because I think, like, for me, DevOps was, it was like a milestone in my career.

CARMEN: Yeah.

ADRIANA: Like, it was. I, for me, it was a turning point because it was where I'm like, oh, I like infrastructure stuff, but I also like coding and I can do both? What?? It was like...🤯

CARMEN: And like, just, just the thought that just the fact that, like, so much, so much, like really good tooling is being made to make this more accessible for folks. Like, for me, onboarding is always a question with this sort of thing. It's both like, it's double edged sword. And like, I find that as folks, like, especially in the ops communities like are taking all of these steps to make these tools, make all of this, like, all this learning that we had to do in one way or another, perhaps more painstakingly than others, more accessible, is something that I'm finding really compelling.

ADRIANA: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the fact that we've been able to transcend beyond bash scripting, right? Which, I mean, I love a good bash script, don't get me wrong, but I definitely appreciate all this other tooling that is now available for our convenience.

CARMEN: Semi related. Like, it's funny you mentioned that because like sort of related to Windows and shell scripting, I had to build a...so, like, one of the things that I do at my main job at DevCraft Academy is like give folks training in reviewing pull requests and like giving like kind, thoughtful, constructive, not necessarily nice, because nice is like superficial, but like kind for me is like really pushing towards, like this is great. This is how it can be better. So I'm like really pushing for a lot of that stuff. And one of the things that happened especially like, as folks are getting more experience in, like, contributing actively to teams, is giving your files and folders names that are not going to make Windows explode because Windows is pretty strict, uh, conventions for how you name your files. So. Okay, no problem. I'll just, like, add a little, like, existing GitHub action that, like, validates those names.

But it turns out, like, the thing I need didn't really exist. So I was like, well, guess I'm going to have to write my own. And I had to dip my toes into shell scripting for this. And good golly, did I struggle. And at the end, like, my client was like, why don't you just make a Ruby script for it? I was like, that's an option. Oh, goodness. And then it took five minutes.

ADRIANA: I feel. Yeah, yeah, there, there were a few instances where I'm like, you know, on the path towards creating, like, this horrible shell script, and then I'm like, I can do it in Python.

CARMEN: Exactly. I mean, isn't that one of the most wonderful things about tech, is that you have these tools available and, like, you have the right, like, I don't know, something I've been thinking about a lot lately. Kind of a side note is that, like, when we're introducing folks to, like, tech in general, and, like, we sort of, like, build up this sort of image, not, not on purpose. I don't think, and definitely not maliciously, that there is a perfect learning path that they have to take, or there's like, learn this, this, this and this, and you're good in this exact order. And, like, unfortunately, whether we like it or not, there's no set path because if there was, it'd be documented, right?

ADRIANA: Yeah.

CARMEN: So, and I feel like one of the things that I would love to, like to communicate more and want to do a better job at communicating is that, like, look, there's never going to be a perfect tool for a job. It's going to be the one that works best for you, like, working solo or working with your team. There's going to be the one that works best for y'all. For example, writing a script, gonna be Python for you, gonna be Ruby for me. And that's like, neither is wrong.

ADRIANA: Exactly.

CARMEN: Like, in most circumstances, if they're like, I don't know, running something on some embedded thing that only works on Python. Sure. Then your options are a little bit more limited. But, like, again, working within, working within your means and, like, picking the right tool for the job, I think is so much more important than, like, having, like, what is the most optimal tooling for the job.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah. I totally agree with you. And I think that speaks to it even makes me think actually about, that's how I feel about Agile.

CARMEN: Oh, yeah.

ADRIANA: Where I feel like we've especially generally, I think as an industry we've invested so much time in like the, the structure around Agile. And especially a lot of people equate Agile with Scrum even though Scrum is an approach to Agile.

CARMEN: Yeah.

ADRIANA: And, and I detest Scrum. I detest SAFe Agile because it's...it defeats the purpose of what Agile is, which is agility and fast feedback loops. And people get so caught up in the, you know, you have to do it this, this and this way that, and get caught up in the ceremonies that you end up completely forgetting the point of why you were doing this in the first place. And so what I've always found has worked really well. I've, where I've seen teams being really successful at Agile is when they pick and choose the things that work best for them. It's like, oh, Scrum has an interesting concept that, you know what, it works really well for our team. And maybe SAFe has a thing and maybe Kanban.

So then you pick and choose these different approaches and it's a choose your own adventure. And it's similar with like solving, you know, it's similar with like what you were saying around like learning paths there is there because people learn so differently. And what clicks well with one person won't click well with another person. We have visual learners, we have non visual learners. So what's going to, what's going to work best? And so of course, as you said, there's no, you can't say like this. This is the path or if you learn these tools that is going to take you to where you need to be because it, it may and may not.

CARMEN: I mean, to the point of like, you know, learning differently. I, I actually got pushback on that from. Do you, do you by any chance know somebody called Felienne Hermans?

ADRIANA: I don't.

CARMEN: Oh. So she wrote this fantastic book called The Programmer's Brain. Highly recommend it. She's a neuroscientist, I believe. Don't, don't quote me on that. But she does a lot of work around the neuroscience and like, you know how that works in programming. She's working on this programming language called Hedy which like is like put pushing back on monolinguism in that. Like you can write it in any spoken language you want.

ADRIANA: Oh, whoa. That's cool.

CARMEN: Right? So we had her on. On The Bad Website club for like you know, learning how to learn and all of that. And she was pushed...she...because I very...said, like, well, yeah, we all learn differently. And she goes like, actually we don't. I can't remember why, but I remember that pushback. So whatever I hear, like, we will learn. We all learn differently is like, wait a minute. Apparently we don't.

But like, I think there's a, there's something to be said for like the, the aspects of like, because I used to teach children to code and like, like, actually one of my favorite things I've ever done was, you know, I was never the best student, but one of like at university. But like, one of my favorite things I did was actually my bachelor thesis which I wrote about like my experience teaching children to code and comparing that with like, established research in the, uh, technical pedagogy for children. And like, there's these, there's these two, um, learning theories that, that exist. One is called constructivism and one is called constructionism. And I'm going to focus on the latter which says that our learning is modular, where we pick up different, like, let's say like Lego blocks and apply them and analogize, analogize, analogize. Compare them with those other pieces of knowledge and make them fit together, which if you think about it, goes back to what we're talking about, like, you know, recognizing patterns. And what I love about that is that it kind of gives a freedom of, for example, choosing your learning path. And then like, when we think about like, you know, how we learn and stuff.

And like, you know, when we do like developer relations and we create different types of content, you know, for example, we like a lot of, there's a lot of metrics that say, like, oh, short form video is super popular right now. And maybe written, like, written a, written content, not so much. Like, personally I prefer written content for learning, but, but there's aspects of video that are very helpful. But like, what I found is that like, people have their preferences, people have their own learning styles that they prefer. And like, having that flexibility is going to help you so much more. I went off on a tangent and I apologize.

ADRIANA: I love that tangent. And you know what? I'm going to go off on a similar tangent because you made me think of....so my daughter attended Montessori school for many years. Because...I'm like super jealous of her education because like, what I love about Montessori is that it really embraces, like, it's all about individualism, but it also teaches you to work as part of a community. And what I especially loved is so my daughter, our first parent teacher interview that I had with her teacher, and she started when she was three in Montessori, and she did it up, up until she turned 13. And her first parent teacher interview, her teacher's like, yeah, Hannah's not learning very well. And also, she stole a bunch of stuff from the classroom, like, oh, my God. My first parent teacher interview. My kids a klepto.

I'm sorry, Hannah. I know you edit this podcast. I hope I'm not embarrassing you. And then I'm like, oh, my God. So I'm, like, panicky. I'm like, went from proud parent to like, oh, my God. And then...and then...Hannah has a very unique learning style where she hates being told what to do.

Like, and I mean, like, everything's on her own terms. And her teacher, Cecile, who, like, we're still friends with to this day, because she cracked the Hannah code, she determined that in order to teach Hannah how to do something, she had to go and show it to one of Hannah's classmates. And then Hannah would walk over, like, learning by observing. Don't teach me. I will learn this way. And her teacher, Cecile, cracked the code. And basically...and then Hannah went through this phase, I think she was, like, four or five, where she decided she wanted to sew.

So she would, like, she sewed, like, gowns and stuff. Like, when she graduated kindergarten, she sewed her own, like, grad dress thing and her. And she was, like, full on obsessed with the sewing. And her teacher, Cecile, again, then, okay, you love the sewing. Let's incorporate other aspects into the sewing. How can we incorporate math? How can we incorporate, you know, science or whatever, like, things into the learning to help her learn. And so ever since then, it's really made me appreciate seeing how she grew up versus how I grew up, which was very, you know, like, very traditional. Like, I'm south american.

I've got, like, my. My mom had very, very distinct ideas of how. How I should learn. And, you know, I spent, like, a summer memorizing my times tables, because that is what you do.

CARMEN: Yep, I can relate. I have that.

ADRIANA: So, you know, as a result of that, it's really...she's opened my eyes to, like, how people. How people learn. And even, like, my husband is dyslexic, and I'm a fast reader, and being around him, I've had to, like, first of all, learn to slow down. I can't just, like, show him a thing. Here, read this right now. And he's like, I need a minute. But also recognize the fact that, like, even though, like, he doesn't let dyslexia get the best of him. He's found coping mechanisms.

So it's so fascinating to see how different people adapt to different situations, how they will learn things differently. And I think that's, like, the most magical thing. And that...yeah, I love that.

CARMEN: No, 100%. I just want to. Just want to clarify the face I made when you. When. When you told me that she had, like, don't tell me how to learn who. That hit, like, a very familiar nerve for me, of, like. I mean, that's the exact. That's why I say I wasn't the best student, because, like.

And, like, it was so fascinating to see, like, how differently I would approach. Because if a professor, like, a university would tell me, like, read this book and, like, spit out its contents on an exam paper, three months later, I'm like, right. The man doesn't tell me what to do. But if a client or, like, somebody or, like, you know, a higher up tells me, he's like, hey, you should read this book. It's really helped me with my career. I was like, thank you, I will. And I read it with gusto. And I'm like, I take notes and stuff.

I'm like. Then I look at it, I'm like, wait a minute, who am I? And, like, I know that's me. That, like, I have, like, you know, attitude and stuff. But, like, I do think it's really, like, I mean, that kind of helps us sort of, like, reframe as well. Like, how we approach these different problems and stuff. Like, reframing is such a powerful tool.

ADRIANA: Like, oh, my God. Yes.

CARMEN: Right? Like, not. Not fully related to learning, but, like, you know, I do a lot of talking about, like, pub...like, tech speaking and public speaking and that sort of thing. And, like, I, like, I will be very embracing of the fact that I get so nervous every time I go on stage, right? And, like, yep. Right? And, like, I help...I used...I used to help run this thing called Global Diversity CFP Day. CFP standing for, you know, call for proposals at conferences when they invite folks to propose their talks and stuff. And like, I just, like, I was like, you know what? I'm going to give a short presentation about getting nervous.

And, like, I just went on Twitter. This was like, gosh, I want to say, like, three years ago and just, like, gathered so much empirical evidence from folks of, like, how do you. How nervous do you get? How nervous do you get relative to when you're going up on stage and that sort of thing. And, like, something I found so magical. Like, there was one person who replied with, by saying, like, I've been speaking for 14 years and I get nervous every single time. I get...I increasingly get unbearable to be around the closer it's time for me to get up on stage.

But then they said, I...and I'm so grateful for the fact that I get nervous because I've reframed it as excitement, as caring. And if I'm not nervous when I'm going up on stage, it means that I don't care about what I'm presenting about and I'm gonna do a bad job. And I was like, whoa.

ADRIANA: Oh, damn! Oh, my God, I love that so much.

CARMEN: It's such a powerful reframing. And, like, I don't get me wrong, it's not about, like, lying to yourself or anything. I think it's just, like, about looking at the things that you experience in and, like, for example, learning and, like, how you...how you, you know, take things in and just, like, rethinking about how you approach them is so powerful.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I love that so much. Yeah. Because, I mean, I always get nervous before talks, and I've learned to just accept it, you know, and that's okay. And I also know myself well enough that, like, once I get up on stage and, you know, unwind a bit and I just get into the groove, and then it's like autopilot, and it's such a magical feeling to you when that kicks in.

CARMEN: It's the best. Like, I always, I always joke that it's like, you know, to get a little bit math nerdy. It's like a, it's like a tangent graph. Like a tan graph where it's, like, not nervous, not nervous. Super, super nervous. And then, like. And then I'm, like, in another plane of existence and, like, yes. Like, I know that my speaking style tends to be, like, very, like, engaging and, like, energetic and stuff.

And then people come up, it's like, oh, my God, you're so, like, don't get me wrong. I appreciate it. This isn't to, like, humble brag or anything. I have a point. But, like, you know, they'll come and be like, oh, my gosh, you're so energetic. It's so cool. Like, how do you do it? And I was like, yo, what you're seeing is, like, anxiety and adrenaline just, like, in human form.

ADRIANA: I can relate to that.

CARMEN: Right?

ADRIANA: Yeah. People are like, you're so peppy and, and then, you know, it's like when you said, like, you won't believe it, but I'm actually, actually, like, very shy. I'm like, I am too. I can so relate. And people, people meet me, they're like, oh, you're so outgoing. It's like, yeah. And then get me in a room full of people I don't know, and I'm the one, you know, in the corner texting. So texting a friend, going, oh, my God, help me.

CARMEN: That was me at my first meetup. I actually, I had a...I had...I had a little weird, like, let's call it a science experiment a few years ago where I, where I went to speak at a conference in Romania, in Bucharest. Had a really good time. They took such good care of me. But, like, I arrived, I, you know, earlier in the day, and I went out to find, get lunch. I was by myself, and, like, I realized I was being so...

I don't know what the term is. Shy, nervous, uncomfortable. Like, I felt uncomfortable even ordering food by myself. Right. And then, like, we went out first. Then was time for the speaker dinner. I kind of awkwardly went up to some folks at the, at the, in the hotel lobby that didn't really. They gave off that vibe as we don't really know anyone here, and we're gonna go to a speaker dinner, and, like, I want to introduce myself to them.

And then, like, we went to the speaker dinner after that. And, like, a couple of the folks I met were like, oh, I wonder where that guy got napkins. I could really use napkins, but I'm too shy to ask. And, like, don't ask me why. My brain, like, rewired itself. It's like, don't worry, I'll take care of this. And I go, it's like, excuse me, sir. Where did you get those napkins? Thinking back to the person, like, 3 hours, 5 hours ago who was too shy to order lunch, and I'm like, what's going on? Right? I don't know. It's weird.

ADRIANA: That's so cool. Yeah. It's funny how, like, certain things will trigger, like, I, you know, I think of myself at, like, conferences, right?

CARMEN: Yeah.

ADRIANA: Like, I am on, at conferences, I'm like, I put on the full on, like, extroverted thing, and then I look back at it and I'm like, who dat?

CARMEN: Oh, my God. I so feel that.

ADRIANA: Right? And sometimes, like, you're not even conscious of it. It's like something goes off and you're like, yep.

CARMEN: And, like, I gotta be honest, I still don't know. Like, I don't even know if I fall in any of the two categories of introversion versus extroversion. Like. Like, don't get me. I thrive on, like, being, like, being on, as you put it, because it's very similar for me. It's like I'm a different person when I'm in public versus I'm, when I'm at home, just, like, doom scrolling or something. But, like, it's. It's.

I don't know. I kind of like that. Don't get me wrong. I think...I think it's not that you're, like, personality is, like, fragmented or something, or it's just. Or anything like that, or that you're putting on a show. I think it's an aspect of your personality that just comes out in those situations, and it's extremely valid.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And what you mentioned earlier, too, like, why should we be put in a category of, like, you're either introverted or extroverted. Why. Why can't it be shades of gray? Like, everything else is shades of gray? There. There are seldom things that are binary. So, like, totally. Why not this?

CARMEN: Absolutely.

ADRIANA: Okay, we're almost done. Yeah, sort of done. No, we're not quite done. That's okay. This has been fun because, like, we've dug into, like, all the topics through. Through the...through these questions, so I'm here for it.

CARMEN: I love it. This is so much fun.

ADRIANA: Do you prefer JSON or YAML?

CARMEN: Oh, I have a YAML story. So I was building back in my Objective-C days, I was building a file renaming app. You drag in a bunch of files, you put in a set of actions, and then it would rename those files for you. It's pretty...it's a pretty complex app, and it's how I learned regular expressions, by the way. Super fun. But regardless, I needed to...these chains of actions that you would take to rename the files, insert these characters, put in numbers, find and replace all of this stuff.

I needed to store these somewhere, and I was like, oh, I'll just store these as YAML. For example, for find and replace, you could have any string you wanted. I was like, cool, we'll just put in, like, you know, if I put in a letter "y", I ran into trouble because YAML doesn't interpret the letter "y" as the letter "y". It interprets it as "true" now. And it gets wilder than that because, like, you might think, okay, well, then, like, don't use the letter "y". Fair. But the same goes for "ON", which is, correct me if I'm wrong, the..what's it called? The abbreviation for Ontario.

ADRIANA: Oh, yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right.

CARMEN: But in YAML, "on" is "true".

ADRIANA: Derp.

CARMEN: And there's a bunch of these that through this...through these...through these sort of, like, frustrations, I just switched over to JSON. I have to admit, it made my life significantly easier. So do I prefer one to the other?

ADRIANA: That was it for you? It's like, yep.

CARMEN: I have...I mean, don't get me wrong. Like, I'm a big, like, use the right tool for the...for the job. I love...I kind of have a soft spot for those quirks of YAML. Don't get me wrong, they're frustrating. But, like, I don't know, I just like. I just like it when a...I just like it when...when languages or technologies have their...there's a spanish word that I love called that. It's mañas. It's like... it's what makes you like. It's like when you're a picky eater, you're called mañoso or mañosa or mañose...it's like, it's quirk. A quirk. That's the term. A quirk.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah.

CARMEN: And I don't know, I find them endearing. So, like, in that. In that context, of course I prefer JSON, but, like, I don't know. I have a soft spot for YAML.

ADRIANA: Fair enough. Fair enough. That's awesome. I love that. I love that. That viewpoint on it. Okay. On a similar vein, do you prefer spaces or tabs?

CARMEN: Oh, oh, I prefer. So, I mean, I use spaces. Well, I mostly used spaces, but there's actually a reason to prefer tabs, and that is for accessibility.

ADRIANA: Ooh, tell me more.

CARMEN: Like, I cannot for the life of me recall what that article, but I read an article where somebody said, like, look, essentially the way, like, a screen reader or something is going to interpret tabs or spaces, it's gonna make more sense to have tabs. And I'm like, you know what? Fair enough. Because at the end of the day, a tab is a character, right?

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. A character that represents a chunk of space.

CARMEN: Exactly. And, like, that feels more, let's say, screen reader-ly honest than two to four spaces.

ADRIANA: Yeah. Huh. That's so cool. I have not looked at it from that perspective.

CARMEN: See if I can find the article, and I'll send it to you.

ADRIANA: Okay, cool. Cool. Yeah, that'd be awesome. Hopefully we can include that in our show notes. Okay, I think you answered this question in one of your earlier statements, but I will ask it formally. Do you prefer to consume content through video or text?

CARMEN: I think, yeah, no, I did kind of. There was somewhere in my rambling. It was there. I think I prefer text, but it really depends on, like, what I'm trying to do for, like, I don't know, like, I think I mentioned. Yeah, I did mention that, like, I installed a liquid cooler into my PC for that kind of thing. A video was much more helpful, but, like, for certain coach things, especially for, like, navigating. Navigating dashboards and that sort of thing, I don't know why I'm at dashboards. I don't know what's up.

Like, I feel like every time they. Every time, like, a dashboard gets updated, I'm like, am I bad at tech? So I find videos really helpful for helping me navigate dashboards and that sort of thing. But there's a balance to it. There's a really great book on documentation called Docs for Developers, and they mention, like, you know, having this versatility of content that I find really, really helpful. So it's...I know I'm...I know I'm tending to answer things where I don't really commit to one side or the other, but, like...

ADRIANA: No, no...I love it! I love hearing, like, the different, the different reasons for the different things. This is great. This is great. It's all the different perspectives. I appreciate it.

CARMEN: You're very kind. But, like, yeah, I think there's just nuances to this sort of thing that make, you know, make them more...more relevant for one or the other. I like talking about creating content, video or text.

ADRIANA: Ooh, I should add that one.

CARMEN: It's...let me tell you...I love live streaming. I love writing, like, prose or tutorials or guides and that sort of thing. I am so bad at videos and I don't know why because, like, I think the script has to go so perfectly. Like, did you do a lot of, like, did you pre record any talks during, like, when there were a lot of conferences were online?

ADRIANA: I wasn't doing talks at that point, but I have a recent experience...so this year I launched my video course on Observability through O'Reilly, and I had to do a lot of recording for that. Like, the whole thing is a video course. And, you know, I thought, okay, once I handed in my slides, like, it would be easy to record the video because I had all my speaker notes and stuff. Oh, my God, I can't tell you how hard it was to record the video for that. That was like, like the number of times I would, I would spend sometimes like an hour on one slide because I'd be, like, tripping over my words and I'd be like, so frustrating.

CARMEN: There's an, first of all, I feel you so much. Like, like, I just triple, like, I don't know why. Every time I have to record some video, like, I do some video courses for Egghead and like, every time I have to pre record a video, I'm always, I always naively think to myself, I can do this in one take, no problem. I do stuff in one take all the time. Not taking into consideration that I trip over my words constantly or like, I mess up and I just like, sort of just like blankly stare into space for a minute. I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, right. My friend Cassie Evans released a montage. She does, like, stuff with green...I believe with GreenSock Animation...CSS animation stuff.

And she released a montage of like, all of the time she's messed up and sworn at...like, let out a swear word. So much life. I love that we've all done it. Let's be honest.

ADRIANA: I can't tell you how many outtakes I have going, "motherfucker!"

CARMEN: Honestly, even for like, even for like a two minute video for like, I'm going to speak at a conference next month about like, dependency management that they're like, hey, do you mind, like, recording a two minute video for us? And I was like, well, there go 3 hours. Because I'm, because I'm just like, hi, my name is Carmen and damn it. Hi, my name is Carmen and I'm here to damn it. And like, it's just that...a bunch of, that. It's the worst!

ADRIANA: Yes, it is. I like...yesterday I was putting together a video to accompany a blog post that I'd written. I don't know why I thought, like, let's do a video too. Like, I find, I find video work challenging, as you mentioned. And it was similar thing, like a three minute video. It took me an hour to record it. And also I'm like, I don't need a script.

CARMEN: Oh, my God.

ADRIANA: And I really...I do need a script. I do. I'm sorry, me, but you do.

CARMEN: Like, so, like, I don't know, like with talks it's different. With talks, it's like, I don't need a script. I don't need like speaker notes. Like, I'm fine. I can just wing it. It's totally cool. Like, for some reason I just sort of like, come up with the script in my head. And don't ask me why, but I.

I like, it's. It's not so much a script. I like to call it a. A mental choreograph of how I give a presentation and, like, I don't know, timing and stuff. It's just all in there, but with a video, just not the same. And I don't know why. So weird!

ADRIANA: It ends up more robotic for some reason. Like, yeah, I look at myself in videos, especially, like, the one I did yesterday, thankfully, was a voiceover. But, you know, if you're doing a video with your face on it now, it's like, oh, my God, I've got resting bitch face, or, like I look like a robot or whatever. Right?

CARMEN: It's like, the silly thing about that is that we're the only ones looking at those aspects of ourselves, right? Because everyone else is, like, focused on the content.

ADRIANA: Yeah, it's true. Yeah. They're like, why. Why is their face there?

CARMEN: I'm not even that. They're just, like. Like, barely registering it. It's just like, yep, that's a face talking to me. It's not like. It's not like me where I'm looking at myself going, like, oh, God, my hair. Like, I look so sweaty. Oh, my God. You know, like that sort of thing.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I know. Yeah. We tend to be so self critical and...I don't have the answer for that...I...you know, I tell people, don't be self critical. Meanwhile, I'm like, oh, my God, everything sucks.

CARMEN: Do as I say, not as I do.

ADRIANA: Yeah, exactly.

CARMEN: Totally.

ADRIANA: Exactly. That's okay. That's what therapy is for. It's helping me get through. Same. Okay. Oh, we have one more question left.

CARMEN: Hey, I I'm excited.

ADRIANA: Okay. What is your superpower?

CARMEN: Oh, gosh. That one's actually gonna stump me. What is my superpower? I'm gonna sound naive, maybe, but, like, I think so. I used to frame it as, like, if a dummy like me can do it, so can you. I'm trying to reframe that into a little bit more of an expertise, because I owe myself some credit, but, like, I think my superpower might be making things approachable.

ADRIANA: Yes.

CARMEN: And I mean. And I mean that in every sense of the word. Like, one of my favorite projects I ever did back in my days at Codesy, where we were doing a tool, we were making a tool on a complex, code based understanding, and I was like, well, it's Hacktoberfest. We need a live stream. Carmen, do you have an idea. And I was like how about we get a bunch of like open source maintainers, have them onboard me onto their project using our tools, never having looked at the code before, not even tried the programming language before, and like it was, you know, it's onboarding so, and I, and I have no sense of dignity, so I bought a little sailor outfit and like, you know, they were onboarding me to the ship and it was a lot of fun and, but I felt like, I felt like that sort of like relaxation and like, you know, embracing what is it failing, how does I put it? Failing positively, failing safely, taking privilege into consideration, of course, but like failing safely and responsibly. Something, I think that's something that I'm good at. I remember I have one more story I had.

So like I was doing the, we're teaching JavaScript online for free at the Bad Website Club, and like we're doing the free code camp exercises. They're very kind, they're very cool people. There was one exercise there called the Record Collection Exercise where you had to manipulate a complex JavaScript object with a function and it was pretty complex. So what this was is an hour of live streaming where I would just go through and explain the solutions that I would write as I wrote them and explain concepts and that sort of thing. And I got so stuck, I got extremely stuck, couldn't make it work. And I remember panicking on the inside, of course, I'm very good at hiding it. I remember panicking being like oh my gosh, this isn't working. And people in the chat were like, I'm so lost...she's...what is she doing? Try, like, have you tried doing this and this and that? And I couldn't process it.

I was just like ah, anyway, and I felt like a failure. But I did eventually get it. I spent like 20 minutes of that 60 hours...60 minutes livestream going through this exercise. And then like I went, I disconnected, sat down, I had a tiny cry, but then I got a message from somebody being like hey Carmen, you know, that looked really tough. Congratulations on beating that exercise. I just wanted to write you and say like thank you for showing me that even someone who's been developing for software for 15 years is gonna get stuck on stuff occasionally. And that to me felt like probably the biggest victory of my career, where I made something seem more approachable, where I just added that human side of it. Like, I think especially as we're finding our first roles, we forget, especially if we've been in tech for a while, we forget what it's like to look up to folks and think like, well, they know everything.

It's kind of like when we're children and we look at grown ups and we're like, oh, yeah, they've got everything figured out. And then we, you know, I'm 36 and I'm like, still waiting for that to happen. And like, yeah, same happens with tech, you know, and I think that might be my superpower, just sort of like embracing.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I love that. I love that so much. And, you know, I...and you give off very approachable vibes. Like, you're, you're very friendly and bubbly and I feel like, you know, you're someone I'd want to learn from. And I think approachable, oh, no problem. Honestly, you know, making tech approachable and, and putting a friendly face to it is so important. Especially, like, I, I think for women in tech, that's so important too. Especially because so many of us come in intimidated.

Absolutely intimidated. Um, especially because it's, it's still a man's world in tech and we gotta, you know... and being able to show other people that, a, we exist.

CARMEN: Yeah.

ADRIANA: And b, like, we're friendly and approachable. Come learning with us...I think is so, so important.

CARMEN: I agree 100%. And if, you know, if I may say likewise, like, you have made this experience of talking to you and podcasting. I feel like I've known you for ages. It's the strangest thing.

ADRIANA: I know. I feel like we're like besties, right?

CARMEN: And like, and I think that's, that is that same application of like, making something approachable, making it not comfortable in a, in a, in a....let's say more like, let's say marshmallowy way, but like making, making folks comfortable to, for example, something as, something as perhaps straightforward from the outside is asking questions like, we take for granted how scary it is to ask questions and knowing, like, what's a proper heuristic of when to ask a question, especially as you're starting out and like, you know, especially if you don't work in a very positive, a positively reinforcing team. Like, how do I ask questions like, what is the right time? Like, I have a little hack for that, actually. Like, even though, like, I might know the answer to something if we're at a meeting or something, I'm still going to ask the question being like, what are KPI's? What is SEO? Or whatever? And like, I find that, like, make, it's that aspect of approachable. Maybe it's my focus point?

ADRIANA: Yeah. Yeah. I really like that. And I think forcing yourself to ask questions and, because, like, I remember so early on in my career, I'd be sitting in a meeting, absolutely lost and just, like, not knowing what's going on, and. And I've started to just, like, I force myself because it's so scary, too, like, especially when you're in a room of people who are so confident and they exude confidence, but they might not actually know anything or they might not know as much as they let on, let's say.

CARMEN: Yeah.

ADRIANA: And so I've taken to just, like, take a deep breath, ask the question, and I kind of take the Columbo approach. And, you know, like, for folks who are younger, I'm sorry, if you don't know who Columbo is, you should definitely look up Columbo. He was this awesome detective on TV, but his approach was, like, kind of, it was kind of the bumbling idiot question. So it wasn't that I presented myself as a bumbling idiot, but I'd be like, you know, just, just for my own education. To clarify for me, could you explain what, what this means and taking that sort of approach? And people are usually more than happy to answer that question that you have, which is, like, that's another thing that I learned. It's, like, asking.

CARMEN: And there's almost, like, a bystander effect to it where, like, maybe everyone wants to ask that question, but they don't feel like it's the right space to. And, like, by doing so, you kind of open that door and, like, allow more conversations to flow. And, like, especially for those, like, in a higher position of privilege, I highly encourage them to lend it and, like, make things more accessible for folks.

ADRIANA: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's one of the things I enjoy about being a DevRel as well, is I find, like, you know, the thing that, that kind of launched my blogging, my tech blogging was like, I'd be spending all this time, like, trying to figure stuff out, and. And then I'm like, oh, my God, this was a doozy. I got to write about this a for my own benefit so that I can. And I referred back to my blog posts that I've written in the past. I'm like, thank you, past me. I forgot this.

But also, like, my thought is, like, if I have this question, chances are others will, too. And I also like to document, like, these are all the places where I messed up. And so you might want to check this, too. Like, I try to include a list of gotchas, depending I, depending on what I'm writing. And I think that's really important.

CARMEN: I agree 100%. In fact, you reminded me, like, one of the things that I always like, especially when folks are starting out with, like, public speaking and that sort of thing, like, they're always like, what is the one number one thing that we hear? And, like, I feel it myself from time to time, too, because I'm human and it's like I have nothing to talk about. And I was like, and I always tell them, look, there's one audience member that you want to be targeting, and that is yourself from four months ago who would have benefited from this talk. And, like, as long as you've got that one person, because there's always going to be one person who watches something or, like, reads something that you've created and will, you know, they might reach out, they might not, but, like, know that people are benefiting from that, especially, like, you know yourself from the future. Like you said, I think it happened to me once already that, like, that I googled, like, a problem. I was like, oh, I wrote a blog post about this.

ADRIANA: Yes.

CARMEN: It's a great feeling.

ADRIANA: It is. I know. Yeah. And so, like, and that's why I was also encouraged people to, like, blog stuff that they learn about because, like, I had this one mentee, and, you know, I was trying to give him some, some direction on his career. I'm like, you know what? Blog stuff on Medium. And within months, he got, like, he got a lot more followers than me on Medium. I'm like, damn. I'm genuinely happy for him because he writes about, like, I believe he does, like, working in AWS, and he does a lot of stuff around APIs, and that's something that resonates with the community.

So, like, for him to get that many followers means that he's writing about stuff that really, like, touches...it's things that people want to know about. So I'm very, I'm very happy to have encouraged him to do that. And every so often when I see one of his blog posts, I'm like...

CARMEN: If I may, you absolutely, like, deserve to give yourself credit as well for playing a part in that. I think it's not something that I don't know...I find that oftentimes we don't give ourselves enough credit for the work that we do and encouraging others and taking some credit for it for ourselves and being like, you know what? I did play a part that's significant.

ADRIANA: Oh, thank you. Yeah, yeah, that's true. We do need to remember that we influence people's lives in different ways.

CARMEN: Absolutely.

ADRIANA: That's so awesome. Well, we. I think we're coming up on time, and we got through all...we got through all the lightning round questions, and this was, like, honestly such a fun application of the lightning round questions because it just, like, turned into so many fun topics that we got to dig into. And I swear I could just keep asking you more and more questions.

CARMEN: Same. I'm having such a good time.

ADRIANA: I think it just means I'll have to have you on at another point again.

CARMEN: I'd love that. Thank you.

ADRIANA: That would be so fun. So, yeah, you know, before we part ways, do you have any, any words of advice that you want to impart on our audience or hot takes, if you have any? Either is good.

CARMEN: Yeah, I think, you know, like, for me, very much a topic that's been very recent in my life is just sort of, like, trying to decouple myself from my online self, by which I mean, or, like, my professional self, and, like, trying to learn, like, not so much in a work life balance kind of thing, in terms more of a, like, identity sense of, like, am I a programmer or a human, or am I a dev. Am I an ops person? Am I a human being? Like, where do those coalesce? I don't even know if coalesce is the right word, but I'm gonna go with it. And. And, you know, been trying to take steps to sort of, like, maybe be a little bit less. Less online, maybe be like, I was having a conversation with somebody today about, you know, trends in tech and, like, FOMO, you know, fear of missing out. And, like, lately, that sort of, like, evolved for me in the last couple years into something that I called AOMO, which is more, ambivalence of missing out and, you know, trying to not...so not...I mean, of course, you know, mental health is very important, but also, like, trying to, I don't know, somebody gave you some advice once which was something like, youre only as helpful as you are capable in terms of energy, in terms of, like, you know, capacity.

If you take on too many mentees, the quality of your mentorship is going to decline, right? And I feel like a lot of that applies to. I mean, like, I'm talking about mentorship as if there's some kind of, like, seniority to that advice, and there really isn't. I think that this applies to a lot of aspects of my career. My friend Jess gave me some advice that I really love, which is that my phone is not allowed in my bedroom, and that has been such a game changer for me, first of all, because, like, the alarm sounds on my phone, I have to get up and go turn it off, as opposed to get up, drug, like, sort of groggily turn it off, and then go back to sleep. And I find that, like, yeah, I guess I'm trying to, like, decouple myself a little bit in terms of, like, you know, social media is...is...is very impactful, and it's giving me so many opportunities, opportunities for my career. But at the same time, I know that in my mo. In my weaker moments, it has dictated my life a little bit. So I'm trying to, like, you know, go easy myself and that sort of thing, and just. But at the same time, I'm not. I'm gonna not...I'm trying to feel less bad for feeling bad, if that makes any sense.

ADRIANA: Yeah. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense.

CARMEN: So, yeah. And generally, my friend Sylvia, when we were getting to know each other, I adore her to bits. She gave me some advice that I really love, which is, like, you need to present more as an expert, and that is such a weird little contrast to making things accessible. You also need to present a little bit more as an expert. It's something I'm figuring out. So it's not so much advice as this is what's going on in my life, but I think there's some resonance there with folks, so I hope that's helpful.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, that's so helpful. And I think I, you know, you've said so many insightful things, and I really, really enjoyed our conversation today. This has been a real, real treat and definitely brightened up my Tuesday.

CARMEN: Aw. Same, if I may say, like, you made this so approachable and so easy and so comfortable. Thank you.

ADRIANA: Oh, thank you. I really appreciate that. Well, and with that, thank you so much, Carmen, for geeking out with me today. Y'all don't forget to subscribe and be sure to check the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media. Until next time...

CARMEN: Peace out and geek out.

ADRIANA: Geeking Out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Villela. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking Out is also produced by my daughter, Hannah Maxwell, who, incidentally, designed all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the socials by going to bento.me/geekingout

The One Where We Geek Out on Being a Field CTO with Liz Fong-Jones

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Adriana Villela, Hannah Maxwell, Liz Fong-Jones) — Tue, 3 Sep 2024 04:00:00 +0000

About our guest:

Liz is a developer advocate, labor and ethics organizer, and Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) with nearly two decades of experience. She is currently the Field CTO at Honeycomb, and previously was an SRE working on products ranging from the Google Cloud Load Balancer to Google Flights.

Find our guest on:

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show notes:

Additional notes:

Observability Engineering by Charity Majors, Liz Fong-Jones, and George Miranda

Transcript:

ADRIANA: Hey, fellow geeks, welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada, and geeking out with me today, I have Liz Fong Jones of Honeycomb. Welcome, Liz.

LIZ: G'day, Adri, from Sydney, Australia.

ADRIANA: Thank you for waking up early to record.

LIZ: That's kind of my life these days, given that I work with people from the US and Canada, start early, take a break midday, and then work late to catch the UK.

ADRIANA: Oh, damn. Wow, that is a lot.

LIZ: You know, that's a voluntary choice that I made to move to Australia, so I fully accept that.

ADRIANA: Are you permanently moved to Australia? Because before, I remember, you were splitting your time between.

LIZ: I'm still splitting my time, but, you know, I have a house here, I have clients here, so I'm spending several months a year here.

ADRIANA: Oh, nice, nice. And hopefully...how's the weather down under right now?

LIZ: A little bit chilly and rainy, but, you know, not by Canadian standards, right?

ADRIANA: True, true.

LIZ: People are complaining. Oh, like, you know, it's like, you know, 10 degrees or 15 degrees, and I'm just like, yeah, whatever, it's fine.

ADRIANA: I know, right?

LIZ: I have a jacket.

ADRIANA: There you go. Yeah, we've had, um, kind of, we've had a hot summer in Toronto, actually. Like, like Brazil hot, which is where I'm from originally. And, yeah, I've...I have a pretty good heat tolerance, but I have been melting, so...

LIZ: Yeah, yeah, it's fun to, you know, it's like the sauna to the, to the ice. To the ice bath, right? Like going back and forth. You get used to rapid climate changes in addition to time zones. That's something that no one tells you about is climate change.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. Well, I'm super excited to have you on...on the show and, and for folks who have been listening to Geeking Out, Liz was On-Call Me Maybe way back when, when I used to host that with Ana. And so I'm very excited that you've agreed to come on. Now, before we start off, I always like to start my guests off with some icebreaker questions. So are you ready?

LIZ: As ready as I'm going to be.

ADRIANA: All right, first question. Are you a lefty or a righty?

LIZ: I am a righty, like a majority of the population.

ADRIANA: All right, do you prefer iPhone or Android?

LIZ: I am an Android user because Google gave them to me for free for about a decade. I was one of the early, one of the Android beta testers. So that meant that I got free phones that might break. And that habit has carried on since after I left Google.

ADRIANA: Oh, that's so cool. How was it like having used like the early Android phones? What kind of experience was that?

LIZ: Yeah, you get them early in the technical validation process and you help carry them through all the way to production. Because of NDA, I can't talk exactly about what the experience was like. But yeah, no, it's cool having access to, to the latest hardware. It's actually though, it makes you weirdly paranoid because you have to hide your phone from being photographed by others. You have to slip it in your pocket at all times. You can't just leave it out on the table. So it does introduce some interesting complications to your life. But it was worth it at the time to get access to the latest and greatest hardware and to give the team feedback on it.

ADRIANA: Wow, that's so cool. Okay, next question. Do you prefer using Mac, Linux, or Windows?

LIZ: I am a hardcore Linux user with one exception. Well, it's technically still Linux on the desktop. I am a ChromeOS user for my laptop, again like habit from my Google days. But yes, I do my development in a VM on that ChromeOS machine. So it's Linux. I'm talking to you from a Linux machine. I have a habit of building mini ITX PCs that are all Linux based. I think I've got four little computers running around, each of which is its own independent Linux system.

ADRIANA: So are you then a lifelong Linux user? Did you ever dabble in Windows?

LIZ: I've been using Linux since I was 16, since 2003, 2004, cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's been my primary environment since, since college. So since 2005.

ADRIANA: I was, I guess forced...DOS was forced upon me because I mean like when Windows...

LIZ: Oh yes, of course, right, like MS DOS. Yeah, no, no, no, as a kid. Yes. Yeah, QBasic. Yeah, yeah.

ADRIANA: QBasic, oh my God, yes! Exactly!

LIZ: I knew I was destined to become a programmer when, in I think fourth grade, I wrote a program that would take three sets of coordinates and solve the quadratic equations.

ADRIANA: That's so cool. My dad got me into BASIC. He pulled me aside when I was ten and he's like, how'd you like to see something cool? I'm like, all right.

LIZ: Yeah. Yep. It runs in my biological family. I've got uncles and aunts who work in IT. So yeah.

ADRIANA: That's awesome. Okay, next question. What's your favorite programming language?

LIZ: Ooh, favorite. That's an interesting question. So I'm somewhat known for solving Advent of Code every year. I've been doing Advent of Code every year since it started in goodness, I don't even remember when it started, but like 2017 or something like that. So I've been doing Advent of Code in Go publicly on stream when I can for the better part of a decade now. So definitely Go is a programming language...I even use in recreation, the language that I use professionally. But it's really hard to pick favorites because, you know, I work with clients, clients use all kinds of languages.

I have to be a little bit of a polyglot as a result. So like, I do, I have a project that's written in typescript, for instance. I think it's really important to not, you know, just settle into rut and be like, I am a Java programmer, right? I think you kind of have to see and experience kind of what's going on. So at some point I will pick up Rust, I am sure, and become the prototypical stereotype of a trans cat girl who programs in Rust and has stripey socks, but that's not going to be today.

ADRIANA: Fair enough, fair enough. I do really like what you said about just broadening your horizons and learning other languages because I was actually like a Java developer for like 15,16 years and that was like my whole life. And then a friend introduced me to Python and, you know, I was like in my 30s at the time and I'm like, oh, so cool. Like, you know, it was for the first time, like since, you know, my BASIC days I did QBasic, Visual Basic, that I was like actually picking up another language and I'm like freaking cool. I got to do more of that. And yeah, and that was like my first sort of like, oh my God, you can learn another language at the same time, which is ridiculous when you think about it. Of course you can. Next question. Do you prefer dev or ops?

LIZ: I prefer ops. I still, despite my railing on about how you shouldn't try to be a hero, I personally enjoy that feeling of solving the problem. I'm not going to say that I enjoy necessarily being the hero, but I definitely enjoy being, being the person who has the insight that solves a problem, right? Like, you know, it's weird, right? Like, you know, when you, when you're doing dev stuff, like, you know, there, there is some degree of, you know, I'm, I have a start of the problem. I have the end of the problem, I fill in the stuff in the middle, right? Like you have some idea as to how it's going to go because you've decomposed the pro- the problem enough, right? Yeah, I think with ops it's a little bit more unpredictable. There's a little bit more novelty. Right? Because you don't know what's going to happen when you open up the box, right? And I, and I think that's, that's, that's the fun thing.

ADRIANA: Yeah. Yeah.

LIZ: So I'm not going to say it's necessarily about, you know, the esteem of having people be like, Liz, you solved it. Like...But it's much more about the, you know, I find that it's really interesting to do the ops and, and to, and to find new things.

ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. Totally agree with you. All right, next question. Do you prefer JSON or YAML?

LIZ: I think I prefer JSON because it is not whitespace sensitive and, you know, you can pretty print JSON if you need to. That being said, my pet peeve about JSON is the fact that they do not support the trailing comma in lists and that peeves me off to...like nothing else. But no, I have to interact with YAML because of Kubernetes manifests and CircleCI configs and I have broken enough YAML configs. Oh, and the hand handling of floats and the handling of like, variables. Can we not just quote all of the keys and call it a day? Right? Like, it's stuff like that that just drives me up the wall.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I feel, ya. I've heard a couple of horror stories with YAML. Like someone was telling me the other day, like, "ON", which is the abbreviation for Ontario, is interpreted by YAML as "on", "true". So it's like...I know, right? So it's like all these little nuances in YAML where you have to be like extra careful. Plus the white space. I still like YAML myself because I find it a little bit more readable than JSON because of like my Java days. All the curly braces in JSON just kind...

LIZ: Just feed it to JQ and you'll be good, right? That's literally what I do anytime I encounter anything that's in JSON is I immediately pretty print it. You're right.

ADRIANA: Oh, yeah. I have to pretty print it because I just cannot function otherwise. I feel you. Okay, next question. Do you prefer spaces or tabs?

LIZ: I am a Go programmer, so I am obliged to tell you tabs. But let's be real. I think that spaces work a little bit better in text editors because they actually run consistently. Like, I have to manually configure, like my tab with in Nano, my favorite text editor, in order to, you know, whenever I set up a new machine, because it defaults to eight spaces for a tab and that just eats your screen, right? Two, two, right? Like, so, yeah. I personally would prefer spaces, except for Go makes me use tabs.

ADRIANA: Ah, fair enough, fair enough. Okay, two more questions to go. Do you prefer to learn through video or text?

LIZ: I am a text person. I use captions whenever I can because I just read so much faster than I audio process. Or rather, if I'm going to be listening to video, I have to listen to it at 1.75 x or 2x. I just have to. It's not that my audio processing is slow. It's actually the opposite of that. It's that interacting with video at 1.0x is painful, and I will often multitask something else with it. If you make me watch a video at 1.0x. Cue the obligatory HR videos where you have to sit...sit and watch them, and like, click the little spinner at the end of 1 minute precisely. And it's just like, yeah, so, yeah, text. Because I can read it however fast I want without having to wait for the speaker to deliver the words.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I agree with you. I actually watch TV with captions on, and it's just so...

LIZ: I watch TV with captions on and I do something else that if I, rightly, because I process not quite at 2.0x, I process at 1.75x. So as a result, like, if I do two things at the same time, I'm going to miss a little bit of each one. But the captions help me stay like...

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely, yeah.

LIZ: ADHD high 5.

ADRIANA: One thing that I've never, like, been able to do is actually listen to stuff at like, high speed. Like faster than 1x. Like, when I'm listening to a podcast, if I accidentally hit a button that makes it 1.25x, it actually drives me crazy. Like, they're talking too fast. Like, it breaks my brain. I don't know what it is, but so many people I talk to, they're like, I can only listen to it at, like, listen to stuff at super high speed. I'm like, more power to you all. Does not work for me at all.

Okay, final question. What is your superpower?

LIZ: What is my superpower? My superpower is I am...are you familiar with Dungeons and Dragons?

ADRIANA: Yes. High-level familiar.

LIZ: Okay...there is a class that was added on afterwards that's called the Factotum, and the Factotum is able to emulate the ability of any other class by using a certain number of knowledge points. I am a Factotum, right? Like, I am specialized in nothing in particular, but I am really good at being able to do things that specialists in other fields would do, but only one or two of them, and otherwise being able to communicate with specialists in other fields, right?

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIZ: So I can get people to talk to each other who don't necessarily kind of share common ground or share kind of skills. I can pick up those people's skills and use them, at least for a time. So that's my superpower.

ADRIANA: That is such a great superpower. And this leads nicely into our main, or one of our main topics of conversation, which is, I think when you and I met, you were at Honeycomb working as a DevRel. But in the last couple of years, you've transitioned over to being a Field CTO. And for folks in our audience, it would be great if you could explain what that entails and also what prompted you to make that change.

LIZ: Yeah. So Field CTO is a role that is relatively new in the industry, and it really depends from Field CTO to Field CTO, company to company. Um, so actually, the one of the field CTOs at Confluent, um, whose name is Kai, wrote a piece about it. But in essence, you know, regardless of what someone's background is and where they come, come to being a Field CTO from being a Field CTO is about interacting with customers who are making very sophisticated use of your technology or otherwise have really interesting and gnarly technical problems or social problems. Honestly, the social problems are the more interesting ones that they need the help of someone who is an expert and an expert at the executive level to solve, right? So unlike a DevRel, right? Like, you know, I don't necessarily...

I don't necessarily write "how to" blogs anymore. I don't necessarily, you know, yes, I do speak at the occasional conference, but more and more of my time is spent on site with customers. And I think that is, you know, interacting one on one with customers is something that I really, really treasure because it means that I get to see all the cool things they're doing with Honeycomb. And the other piece of my job that I really enjoy is going back to the product development team. And actually, I try to, as best as I can, carry water and chop wood for them and also help solve technical problems that our customers are having at scale in our tool. So, for instance, I am working this week on something where a customer was like, we want more than 100 group by fields in a Honeycomb query. And I'm like, okay, I'll see what I can do. Let's talk to the team to see if it's possible. Let's try it out. I've been Field CTO for about two years now, coming up on two years in October, and it's been super, super rewarding to now be at the executive level in Honeycomb, to have the opportunity to interact with the executives at other companies. It's weird. There's not like, you know, a sudden transition in job responsibilities. I think it was more like, there's this funny thing that happened. In July of 2022, I was invited by Amazon to give the keynote at, or one of the customer keynotes at AWS Summit, New York. And they gave me, the AWS PR team, gave me a lot of side eye about, oh, you're, you know, not an executive.

You're not a CTO or VP. Like, you know, what are you doing up on stage as a principal engineer, right? And that was kind of a catalyst of, okay, fine. Like, you know, titles do matter at some point, right? So I didn't change what I was doing overnight, but instead, I kind of gradually fell into the role, and then the job titles changed afterwards.

ADRIANA: Oh, that's so cool.

LIZ: Yeah.

ADRIANA: So did you find then, because it was more of a gradual change. Like, there was, like, less. Like, was. Was there anything still, like, super jarring that stood out for you when you. When you made that change? Or. Or.

LIZ: I think the main thing that has really been kind of challenging is, you know, when I was DevRel, I was part of the Devrel team, right? Like, you know. You know Jessitron, you know Martin Thwaites, right? Like, you know Martin Dot Net, right? Like, so, you know, they're an amazing team, but I'm not part of that team anymore, right? Like, Charity and I are off on our own as the office, the CTO. And I think that that is a little bit of a change in that. I'm not part of marketing anymore.

I kind of don't have a department. So I work across all the departments, but there's not necessarily anyone I can lean on who's like, you're working with me. Let's do this. So I kind of have to beg and borrow to work with people. And, of course, people are happy to have the opportunity to work with me, but I'm nothing part of their planning processes, right? If I show up and, you know, as happened the past six months, right? Like, you know, if...

If I show up and say, you know, hey, by the way, we're going to be trying out Graviton 4,right? Like, you know, that's...that's something where I either need to drive myself or, you know, I need to just find someone who wants to geek out about it with me.

ADRIANA: Yeah. Yeah. So does part of your job then entail, like, you coming up with some interesting use cases to try out? Or are you driven more by customer asks, or is it a bit of both?

LIZ: Customer and partner asks? But I do think that they're, for instance, the thing with Graviton 4, that's Amazon, who's a partner of ours. They asked us to try it and I said yes. You don't in general say no when Amazon asks you, do you want to try this shiny cool thing? But, yeah, I think that majority of what I do is driven by what large customers are experiencing or what I can see they will be experiencing, right? Like, I think there is some room for thought leadership, right? There is some room for, like, looking ahead of where things are. But historically, as a company, Honeycomb has trended always, you know, too far ahead of where the ball is today.

Right? Where people can't necessarily see. This is, you know, how it aligns with what they're, what they're doing today. And we're trying to course correct that now and meet people, people where they're at now. So that's where I find myself spending a majority of time now is pragmatically connecting where people are with the challenges that Honeycomb helps solve for them. And also seeing these are the integration points that we're going to need, right? So one of the projects I'm working on is relating to better log support in Honeycomb.

Because it turns out that despite Charity and me saying, you know, throw your logs in the bin. Actually, no, you can't. Kubernetes emits logs. You're not going to throw Kubernetes in the bin. So what do we do about that? What do we do about your legacy applications? Looking at that is something I'm contributing to, and that's really driven by what customers ask me about every day.

ADRIANA: Right. That's so cool.

LIZ: Yeah. In terms of superpowers, another superpower...we were just...also, how I consume...I read text incredibly fast. As a result, I'm in several hundred different Slack channels and I read them all and I can just do that. It's great.

ADRIANA: Oh, damn. That is a superpower.

LIZ: Yeah. I don't listen to all of this calls that our sales team have with clients. But, boy, do I ever read the gong summaries of all of the call recordings.

ADRIANA: So it's funny because when you were describing the nature of the job, initially, it almost felt like. Almost like a consultant role, but non technical. But it is totally not that, because there's definitely. It sounds like there's some very, very technical aspects. So you're...you're kind of like a...a super tactical consultant who is working with, like, very high level, like, executives kind of thing.

LIZ: Executives and principal engineers. Yeah, right. Like, you know, that's that first point of call of, there's this really interesting or weird customer who's asking this question they've never seen before, right? Like, hit me with it. Like, I've been around the system long enough, and also, I'm aware of what the best practices are around observability.

ADRIANA: So does this. I wonder, like, does part of your job entail also, like, working with some of the solutions engineers? Like, pairing with them on that?

LIZ: Yeah. So I work with our solutions engineers. I work with our customer support and our customer success team. I work with customer architects. I work with software developers. That's why I say I'm a Factotum. I have to be able to speak sales. I have to be able to speak engineering.

I have to be able to speak marketing. I have to be able to communicate with all of these people and collaborate with them daily.

ADRIANA: What's been your favorite part of being Field CTO so far?

LIZ: I think my favorite part is the variety of it. No customer is alike. I think that's a lot of fun. I think the gratification and the payoff of this is what we're building. This is how people are really, actually leveraging it. I think that's also really, really satisfying.

ADRIANA: Is there any sort of thing that you've been working on that you're allowed to talk about where you're like, oh, my God, this has been, like, the coolest thing I've gotten to do.

LIZ: Yeah. I think one of my on and off fascinations is continuous profiling, and it is very, very weird in that, you know, it interacts with the very, very guts of the kernel, of the runtimes. So getting to interact with one of the Go subsystem maintainers, cherrymui, and sending her crash reports when the profiling doesn't work completely according to plan, getting to work on our integration with profiling that we developed a couple years back and that we continue to use ourselves, I think that's a lot of fun because it shows how much depth there is if you really, really, really want to get into understanding the performance of your system. I do not necessarily recommend that our clients do this. There's so much low hanging fruit to find just via tracing, but we aim to be cost effective. We aim to be fast. And part of how you get there is by looking at continuous profiling and looking at the data down to the kind of nearest, nearest line of code. And I think that's a lot of fun.

It's just maybe not quite at the level of application where everyone should be doing it, but that's kind of a thing that I've worked on, on and off for the past two years that I found to be just, it's so much fun. And that engineer geek brain of, I want to optimize the heck out of this. That's the thing that it really satisfies for me.

ADRIANA: And speaking of profiling, now, profiling is actually one of the newest OTel signals, which is extremely exciting.

LIZ: Yes. I was one of the people who nudged the Pyroscope team to start to form the SIG, and then people from all the profiling vendors joined, and it was wonderful. Yes. So I am really thrilled by it. I wanted to congratulate the people who work on it. And, yeah, having kind of that singular profiling agent contribute by Elastic, like, that's. That's going to be...that's going to be so amazing in terms of just, you know, standardizing the format, standardizing how we can produce the data and then leaving it to vendors and open source solutions for people to look at it.

Right? Like that kind of really, really opens up that opportunity for people to start using it in anger a little bit more, I think.

ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. And just getting that extra little bit of insight now that, you know, it's been standardized, which is super cool.

LIZ: Yeah.

ADRIANA: Now, I wanted to switch gears a little bit because before we started recording, I asked if you had any interesting hot takes to share. So I will let you share your...one o...one of your hot takes.

LIZ: Yeah. So as of when we're recording this, the Gartner Magic Q uadrant just came out. And I was actually just on Reddit, like, you know, talking to a bunch of SREs who...and I think that it's interesting in that, you know, the SREs are saying Gartner got it wrong. And, you know, I may or may not have some spicy opinions about, about the way that the Gartner Magic Quadrant shook out, but I think it's really interesting to see. It's almost like a Rorschach test, right? Like, you look at it and you see what you want to see, right? So, yeah, my spicy take is that because I interact with enterprise buyers, SREs are not the enterprise buyer, right? So I saw SREs just slagging Gartner, right? And it's like, no, the Gartner analysts that I speak to are very smart. They know what they're doing.

And their audience is executives. Their audience is executives at fortune hundred companies, right? Like, so, you know, you an individual contributor SRE at some cool startup. The Gartner magic quadrant is not for you. So if you're complaining, you know, oh, like, you know, why didn't. Isn't Grafana ahead of Datadog and, and Dynatrace? The answer is that Grafana is maybe not quite as batteries included as you know, that large enterprise really wants it to be, right? Like, you know, that's, you know, sure, you can set up Grafana. That's great for you, but that doesn't mean that it's going to be the best choice for a big enterprise. So, yeah, people, you know, were like, oh, my God, like, you know, Gartner's so pay to play, and it's like, no, like, you know, Gartner does a fair job. Like, you know, sure, you can buy their attention to listen to you, but that doesn't necessarily guarantee they're going to, you know, say good things about you.

So, you know, you can get Gartner to, you know, even mention your name in the quadrant, but that doesn't guarantee that you're going to score well according to their evaluation criteria. That being said, you can game their evaluation criteria. So I think that's spicy take number two is I was actually looking at LinkedIn and I saw, you know, Rob Skillington, one of the co founders of Chronosphere, you know, bragging about, you know, how well they placed and also saying, like, you know, they spent, you know, hundreds of hours, you know, a thousand, a thousand hours working on, you know, on making sure that they had every single, like, you know, qualifying attribute of the Gartner magic quadrant precisely shown in a, in a, in a, in a demo video snippet, right? If you try super, super hard and, you know, you curate your example to, you know, demonstrate narrowly what Gartner's asking for, sure, you can do really well, but I think competitively in the field, my own experience is that we do not tend to encounter chronosphere in terms of it being a competitor we've run into in APM competitive situations. They're primarily a metrics vendor and newly logging vendor with their calyptia acquisition. And it seems very weird to me until I saw Rob Skillington's post.

You know, it seemed very weird to me that a competitor that was so weak in the APM and tracing space that very publicly trashed tracing and trashed OpenTelemetry that they could score so well in the Gartner Magic Quadrant. And then the pieces clicked together when I saw that they basically curated the view that they wanted Gartner to see. Whereas I can say my team and the extended team in Honeycomb, we put in a good effort and we showed the product as it is. We didn't invest a bunch of effort in polishing it, and I think that reflects it. Gartner is tough. Gartner is fair. I don't dispute where we placed in the Gartner Magic Quadrant. I think their criticisms of us were spot on, and those are things that we actually happen to be working on.

You know, I think the Gartner Magic Quadrant is a useful tool. You know, I think that it should be taken with skepticism and a grain of salt, but it is not pay to play. It is. If you make one criticism, it's that, you know, you can put in a lot of effort to, like, look super sparkly, but that it is a fair perspective as to how the enterprise market perceives, perceives companies, whether it be observability or a different magic quadrant. So sorry, SREs, you're wrong. Gartner is not being unfair to Grafana. Gartner is not being "pay to play". But you are not the audience for the Gartner Magic Quadrant. Right?

ADRIANA: That's super fair. And I have a follow up question on that, which is, you know, how...what's the process of being like, one of the vendors that Gartner evaluates is that do they look at all the vendors in the space, or do you come to them?

LIZ: They look at all the vendors in the space. Although obviously some of the additions to that are a little bit weird. Like, in past years, they've had Alibaba Cloud on there, and it's like, who? Right? And that might be an example of, okay, this is a really niche thing that they were forced to add for one reason or another. But no, every major player in the space gets given an invitation to participate. But as a criteria for inclusion, you are obliged to...you are obliged to submit proof that you have a certain minimum number of customers. You are required to submit confidential proof of your top line revenue and the growth year on year. And if you do not meet those criteria, you are not included.

They actually added a note in their report saying Observe Inc. was not included in the report because they. Not because they failed to meet the functional criteria, but because they failed to meet the non functional revenue, revenue and customer criteria, which was super spicy, but, right. Like, so, yeah, it is a well rounded set of the industry. Obviously a vendor can choose not to participate. I don't know why they would do that, but, yeah. So your employer, ServiceNow, Lightstep, is on the Magic Quadrant. I truthfully think you should have placed higher, but, you know, I wasn't privy to what you submitted to them.

So, yeah, that's kind of how it goes. Lots and lots and lots and lots of spreadsheets, lots and lots of recording demo videos. And, you know, it's up to you how much time you want to invest in it. We are a 200 person startup. We decided to do a good enough job and not necessarily. Not necessarily clip all the rough edges off.

ADRIANA: Right, right. It's interesting because it almost sounds like, you know, the type of process that you, you go through for an audit. Obviously not, not quite as, as much scrutiny, I would imagine, as doing an audit, but you have to put in the work.

LIZ: Yep. Yep.

ADRIANA: There is another question that I want to ask. You know, having, now that you're, you're interacting a fair bit with, with enterprise customers, what's, how has it been in terms of like, differences that you've noticed between interacting with enterprise versus non enterprise customers?

LIZ: People are a little bit scared by the deploy on Fridays thing. It still is a little spooky to people. Right. Like, and it's understandable that if your deploys break regularly and break after a time, time delay of 24 to 48 hours, that you would be spooked about deploying on Fridays. Right. So I kind of have to dial back the, you know, Charity and Liz, like, you know, break all the things rabble rousing. And, you know, I focus on stability, I focus on speed. And then I'm like, okay, now that you have stability and speed, like, you know, let's, let's talk, let's talk about revisiting Friday deploys.

Right. Similarly, like, I've had to caveat the, you know, test in production to like, you know, you test and you, you test in production whether you admit it or not. Right? Like, we're not saying don't test in staging. We're saying, you know. Right. Yeah. So I think that's definitely changed. I think, you know, the enterprises are not necessarily quite as willing to make large bets with the exception of kind of innovation units in startups or, sorry, innovation units and enterprises.

Right. Like, so they spin up an internal team, they give them resources to work with public cloud, to work with the latest technology. Right. Like those teams are the teams that are more willing to be game to try, to try and experiment.

ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. And let's not forget also the inordinately long process of getting approvals for anything enterprise related.

LIZ: Firewall holes. Firewalls are my new enemy.

ADRIANA: Oh my God. I, when I worked at Bank of Montreal for eleven-ish years, and I think one of the most annoying things that I had to do in my time there was making firewall rules, request changes. It was such a process. Such a process. And I swear it, like changed every time I did it. I just wanted to like pull my hair out. It was. Yeah...

LIZ: I know. And we live in the world of public cloud, right? Like, I use ALBs, the IP addresses of my ALBs, I cannot guarantee. Right? Like, you know, we have private link. That's how we solve that problem for a majority of cases. Right. Like, because people don't understandably don't want to open a firewall hole to all of the us east. One EC2 public IPs.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I feel ya. I feel ya. One thing that I also wanted to ask you spent many years at Google as an SRE. Do you miss it? Do you miss the SRE work?

LIZ: I get to work with the SRE team at Honeycomb and they are so incredibly talented and sharp and I love working with them. No, I don't necessarily get to do that much SRE work myself anymore, but I get to help and work with SREs across many different companies. Right. So I'm kind of a meta SRE now. I've come to terms with that. In terms of Google. Yes, I miss my Google colleagues, but increasingly, whether due to layoffs or voluntary turnover, there's been this diaspora and it's really nice to get to interact with them and potentially even work with them. At Honeycomb, we just had a former Google SRE who became a platform engineering manager at Honeycomb.

Right. Like, so. Yeah. So, you know, I do miss some. I do miss the people, but many of them have followed over into startup world, which is exciting.

ADRIANA: Yeah, that's awesome. And one other question that I wanted to ask with regards to your role as Field CTO, do you find coming in to an organization, you know, when you're proposing certain changes, how open are folks to making those changes?

LIZ: It's a self selecting bias in that the people that I speak to are the people who have already chosen to engage Honeycomb or to do a trial with Honeycomb or are otherwise investigating us. That means that a leader has a mandate for some kind of change. It may or may not be the change that we're proposing, but they do have a mandate for change. So that means that there is some appetite, at least by leadership. Yes. The people they are leading may or may not want to go along with that change, but that's kind of their job as a leader, is to have the trust of their organization and drive the change through, through the organization. So, yes, I think one of the best times to approach someone on behalf of our sales team is when someone's just made a job change, right. When they've just come in as a director or VP or CTO somewhere.

Right. Like, that means that they have a mandate to bring in new practices. And Honeycomb, OpenTelemetry can be some of those new practices.

ADRIANA: Yeah. So, so true. And speaking of OpenTelemetry, what's. What's your involvement with OpenTelemetry these days?

LIZ: I'm an emeritus governance committee member. So, right now, you know Austin Parker very well. So they're serving as, as a OpenTelemetry governance committee member, and they're very easily accessible to me. As you know, we're both Honeycomb employees. The governance committee state belongs to the individual, not to the company. But I don't see a reason for duplication, though, of having multiple people who work at the same company being on the GC. So I haven't felt the need to stand for the GC.

I recently submitted some pull requests to the OpenTelemetry Go project. So, you know, I'm still...I explicitly said I do not want my approver status back. Thank you very much. I don't have enough time to contribute. But, hey, by the way, here's a drive by performance fix.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIZ: Whenever I see a problem that I can help a customer address with my familiar with OpenTelemetry, I'll do it. But we have an entire team, engineering team, that's dedicated to working on OpenTelemetry. Now, I don't have to do that change unless it's something that's super quick and easy for me.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah. That's great. And I think it's so great that so many of the observability vendors out there have dedicated teams to work on OpenTelemetry, which I think really speaks to the staying power of OTel, and that they collectively, everybody wants OTel to succeed. And I absolutely love that.

LIZ: Yeah. Right. Like, it is our SDK. Right. Like, you know, it is our SDK that we collectively have to maintain in order to make sure all of our customers have a good experience. You know, it's a little bit decentralized, but it means that we're working on the same project despite having our paychecks paid by different people. And that's okay.

ADRIANA: Yeah, totally. And one thing that, you know, I always say over and over is I really appreciate the vendor neutrality aspect of OTel because, you know, I interact with folks in OTel who are from different companies, and I don't look at them as competitors. They're just, like, friends, people I work with. Like, we're all working towards the same goal and. And that it's so deliberate that, you know, anytime there's, like, a hint of, like, this might not be vendor neutral, people are like, you might want to reconsider, like, rewording it or, I'm sorry, we can't accept this because it violates our vendor neutrality policy. Super fair. Super fair. And I love that.

LIZ: Yeah. The only bug there has been when someone's marketing department releases something without the. Without checking it first with the OTel team at that vendor. Right. When there's no. Yeah, right. People are pretty good about self policing. Unless, you know, unless there's just a lack of communication. Right. And you could say that about engineering, too, right? Like, you know, lack of communication. That's what causes, like, things to go awry more often than not.

ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. Totally agree with you. Well, we are coming up on time, so before we wrap up, I was wondering if you had any parting words of wisdom that you wanted to share with folks.

LIZ: I think my parting word of wisdom is always be trying new things. And if that new thing is OpenTelemetry, great. The starting experience is super easy. But no, but, yeah, just keep on learning. Never just be like, I'm in my abroad, and this is what I do.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I love that. And so important for tech as well, right? I mean, you either learn new stuff or you wither away from the industry. Well, thank you so much, Liz, for Geeking Out with me today. Y'all don't forget to subscribe and be sure to check the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media. Until next time...

LIZ: Peace out and geek out.

ADRIANA: Geeking Out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Villela. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking Out is also produced by my daughter, Hannah Maxwell, who incidentally, designed all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the socials by going to bento.me/geekingout.

The One Where We Geek Out on Embracing Your Inner Hotness with Diana Pham

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Adriana Villela, Hannah Maxwell, Lian Li) — Tue, 4 Jun 2024 04:00:00 +0000

About our guest:

With a high spirit and a low sense of mortality, Diana completed her master’s in CS regardless of never having coded prior to grad school. Through her passion for learning and teaching tech, she found her calling in advocacy, where she exercises her creativity through conference talks and content creation. She likes oysters.

Find our guest on:

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show notes:

Transcript:

ADRIANA: Hey y'all, welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And Geeking Out with me today from KubeHuddle in Toronto, I have Diana Pham.

DIANA: Thanks for having me.

ADRIANA: Super excited to have you. I've put it on my to do list for KubeHuddle to like, anyone that I've wanted to interview for my podcast that I haven't interviewed, who is here? I'm nailing them down. So yay.

DIANA: I mean, it wasn't really hard to find me because we're both organizers. We more or less had each other's schedules. We ran the schedule, and so we just actually put this entire conference on hold to have this podcast.

ADRIANA: That's right, that's right. They're waiting for us right now. Awesome. Okay, so before we get started, I've got some lightning round questions while my lovely daughter Hannah does like ballet in the background just to troll me, which I love. Okay, are you ready?

DIANA: Yes.

ADRIANA: Okay, first question. Are you a lefty or a righty?

DIANA: I am a righty.

ADRIANA: Okay. Are you iPhone or Android?

DIANA: I'm an iPhone-er. Why don't I have to think about that? I don't know. I thought about that less harder than when you asked me like right or left? I looked down.

ADRIANA: Okay, next question. Mac, Linux or windows?

DIANA: Mac. Just because that's what my company provides.

ADRIANA: Fair enough. That's a good answer. What's your favorite programming language?

DIANA: I am a Python girly.

ADRIANA: Ooh, team Python. And Hannah is like all excited in the background because she loves the Python. I do love Python. I grew up in Java land.

DIANA: Oh, same. It was my second language, Java land. Oh, Java land.

ADRIANA: Java land. I don't know. I'm getting trolled by Tim. Getting trolled by Tim in the background because of my pronunciation of Java.

DIANA: That's pretty accurate. So it was actually my 2nd, 2nd programming language, if not first. And whenever I tweet about me working on something Java related, people would comment. They're like, oh, why are you using Java? Or like, oh, what are you building? And I was like, whatever my company is asking or whatever my company's paying me to build.

ADRIANA: So that's fair. That's fair.

DIANA: Yeah, yeah.

ADRIANA: You like Java? Because I've grown to not like it.

DIANA: It's very verbose. But I'm also a very verbose person, as you'll realize as I keep talking when I shouldn't.

ADRIANA: Hey there's nothing wrong with that. Okay, next question. Do you prefer Dev or Ops?

DIANA: I'm a Dev. I want to learn Ops, but I can barely Ops on a daily basis. I'm going to go with Dev.

ADRIANA: All righty. Do you prefer JSON or YAML?

DIANA: I'm gonna go with JSON. This readability wise.

ADRIANA: That's funny. See, I find, like, JSON not readable for myself. Yeah. I find YAML more readable.

DIANA: I think it's also because when I look at JSON, it's like, an aesthetic thing for me, where I visualize boxes that don't exist. But that's just me being a little dululo, but it works for me. So.

ADRIANA: So, like, the curly braces kind of, like, frame things.

DIANA: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

ADRIANA: And Java vibes.

DIANA: Java vines. Exactly. Once again, verbose, unnecessary, but they're there.

ADRIANA: Okay, next question. Spaces or tabs?

DIANA: I'm gonna say tabs.

ADRIANA: All right.

DIANA: Just out of convenience. Okay, convenience.

ADRIANA: Okay, next question. Two more to go. Do you prefer consuming...I can't talk now.

DIANA: No, you're good.

ADRIANA: Do you prefer consuming content through video or text?

DIANA: Ooh, I would say video. Yeah.

ADRIANA: All right, final question. What is your superpower?

DIANA: Oh, my gosh. So on my. Yeah, so on my slide for our upcoming panel, the closing keynote panel, I put eating oysters and walking and talking in heels.

ADRIANA: Nice. Yeah, that is a skill.

DIANA: I guess, simultaneously, I can walk, talk, and wear heels and eat oysters. And eat oysters. I've never been asked to do that, but if I was, I'm pretty sure I could.

ADRIANA: That could be a special talent at a pageant.

DIANA: There we go. So, for those of you who don't know, Hannah refers me as "Pageant Friend".

ADRIANA: Pageant Friend. Yeah.

DIANA: So I'm not sure how much context you've given her about what I do, but when I was in college, I actually competed in pageants. It was a way of me raising money for school because I went through, like, this whole crisis realizing that I just pulled a bunch of loans without really knowing the value of money when you're 18. And so what do I...

ADRIANA: Just give them to you!

DIANA: Yeah. Yeah. And...and I was like, oh, college. Everyone does that. And so however much it costs, it was like, oh, loans. Everyone knows, like, oh, you need to take both as an American. "As an American", it's really common to get student loans. And so you just have this preconceived notion that you're going to be spending the rest of your life paying off these loans. But once I started to get a job and have some sort of understanding of what the value of money was. I was like, oh, my gosh, I took a lot of money out, you know, and so that's kind of how I spiraled and decided to do a pageant, which is not a very common way of raising money for your school. But...yeah!

ADRIANA: They must pay well enough.

DIANA: Honestly, they didn't like, they didn't. But I do have to admit that when I competed in one, I was in Miss Vietnam, San Diego of 2017. I did that one. I ended up winning, even though my parents really didn't want me to compete. They were more like, hey, just focus in school. Focus on, you know, the things that matter. But I went behind their back. Not saying that other kids of that age should be doing that, but I went behind their back. I competed, I won, and they were very upset that I went behind their back because it was also my, like, I'm Vietnamese American, my family, we celebrate Lunar New Year's, and that was the one year that New Year's landed on a weekend.

ADRIANA: Oh.

DIANA: And so of all years that I could have competed, it was that one. So fast forward. They are really proud that, you know, I had that accomplishment. But where it really, like, paid off, I guess it definitely did not pay off all of school, but I lost my grandpa that same year, and my parents, they're definitely not, like. I don't want to say not in the position, but they do financially support me in school as much as they could. And during that one quarter where the bills were due, they had to fly back to Vietnam for the funeral or just to see my grandpa one last time. And I did not have, like, money from them to pay for school. And so what I do, I cash that check, and that check alone from that one competition paid enough for me to cover my dues for the quarter.

ADRIANA: That's so cool.

DIANA: Yeah, that's awesome.

ADRIANA: Hey, I mean, you got to do what you got to do there to make ends meet. That's so cool. And. But you continued doing pageants.

DIANA: I did. After that, it was more like, I definitely wanted to continue to do it for school. I started competing in more, like, the American pageants in the past, I did more vietnamese local pageants. And so miss. I did miss America's organization, and that was actually the first time I did a tech...a tech talent.

ADRIANA: Oh, cool. What was it?

DIANA: And so you get 90 seconds on stage, and so most girls, you know, they sing, they dance, they play an instrument. And I was like, I'm gonna do a tech demo. And so I did one where I explained how my parents, they're immigrants, and they didn't initially learn English when they grew up. Like, growing up, they just didn't know English. While I, on the other hand, am...

ADRIANA: Yeah.

DIANA: Like, I was given that opportunity. And so when voice assistants came out, here we are with the means to actually purchase them, while back then, like, they never thought that, you know, Alexa would be in their life or they would even be able to afford it. And then finally they came here, they pursued the American Dream. They finally are able to afford this thing, but it doesn't understand them because of their accents. And so just to give some perspective on that, it's just like, it's not that Alexa is racist or anything. It's just the lack of data that's out there, you know? And so I designed an app where they can just text, like, whatever control command they want for the house assisting, or, like, the home assistant. So super briefly high level explained that in 90 seconds, and then I demoed it.

ADRIANA: Oh, my God. So it was like an interview. Yeah, like a job interview. I mean, these things are interviews anyway.

DIANA: I mean, they really are. They really are. And the very first time I did it, it was just like trial by fire. I don't even think that was a term. It was more like your. What is it? The right to passage into town is a demo failing?

ADRIANA: Oh, my God.

DIANA: And so what happened? I didn't...I didn't witness this with my eyes, but I remember I was about to get onto stage, and I hear someone behind me go, oh, there goes the router. When you hear something like that, you're like, I'm not even going to turn around because the lights are going to come up in, like, 5 seconds. And in my mind, I was like, there's no chance this works if someone just unplugged the router and what happened? But it's all right. I had another shot at not that pageant, but I had another shot to do it, and that was really nice. It worked out.

ADRIANA: That's so cool. Yeah. That's so exciting. Yeah. And, you know, like, one of the things that I admire about the fact that, like, you still do these pageants and that I really liked when I met you last year at KubeHuddle is the fact that, like, you lean into, like, your girliness in tech, because I think, like, I think a lot of girls are almost conditioned in tech to, like, not be girly because, you know, you gotta, like, be one of the boys and stuff and.

DIANA: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I definitely felt that when I was in grad school. If you saw, there's actually a video of me. I tweeted it a while back. It was like someone quoting, oh, you must have partied a lot in college. And then you see the video attached, and it's me, like, curled up in a ball in a big hoodie with my friends around. Everyone's, like, playing video games, and you pan to the girl in the corner, and I'm playing a harmonica with, like, my hair tied up, glasses, no makeup. And so I had my unglamorous moments, and I'm like, no, I'm gonna...

DIANA: you know, I'm a pretty feminine person, and I'm not gonna be apologetic about it, or at least I try not to be.

ADRIANA: Because why should we be apologetic for who we are?

DIANA: Yeah, yeah. And it never really, like, stood out to me that other people weren't like that until you brought it up to me that you're like, I'm gonna wear a dress.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

DIANA: And I was like, oh, I didn't even realize that other people weren't wearing dresses. I mean, I did, but it wasn't like, because, yeah, no one else is wearing a dress, and I won't wear a dress type of scenario. And I was like, wow, that really sucks, because that definitely is a thing.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, honestly, like, I never wear dresses to conferences, and for this conference, I decided I want to, like, embrace my....my....femmeness.

DIANA: Yes. And then she had, like, a statement...she had a statement skirt yesterday at her speak...at our speaker/organizer dinner.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I did a schoolgirl outfit thing going on.

DIANA: I think it was a skirt.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah. It was, like, kind of a lime. It was a lime green plaid skirt and then, like, kind of a brightish pink color. No, I know.

DIANA: I was surprised after, too.

TIM: This is why we did SIG-fashion.

DIANA: We were literally talking about this yesterday.

TIM: I've been talking about that for a couple years now.

DIANA: Oh, my gosh.

ADRIANA: There should be SIG-fashion and SIG-makeup.

DIANA: Yeah.

ADRIANA: We're talking about...

TIM: SIG-hair care, right?

ADRIANA: SIG-nails.

DIANA: So GitHub...

TIM: Yeah.

ADRIANA: Oh, so beautiful. Oh, there you go. Yeah, my nails. My nails. For this conference.

DIANA: Yeah, I think GitHub does a really good job at that. They actually have the press on nails.

ADRIANA: Oh, yeah, that's right. I remember those.

DIANA: Yeah, we need more of that. And we're talking about how we should have a makeup station at tech conferences where you can just glow up and have statement makeup based off of your company colors or not. Whatever.

ADRIANA: That could be fun. Yeah. I mean, because they have face painting stations.

DIANA: We were talking about that too.

ADRIANA: Come on.

DIANA: Because how do we get on that topic? Oh, you're talking about clown makeup. And how do we.

ADRIANA: I don't wear makeup because I feel like whenever I put it on, look. I look like a clown.

DIANA: Natural here.

ADRIANA: Yeah. I'm getting, like, looks from Hannah in the background.

DIANA: No, it is really funny, because Hannah, she has makeup on, and I feel like you two are just like a copy-paste of each other. And so if you did want to wear makeup, you see the mirror in front of you.

ADRIANA: I think Hannah's learned how to do my makeup now that works with my skin tone because my eyes are a little more inset than hers. So let's just say that that makeup experiment was quite interesting and yielded some very fun results.

DIANA: Well, we made it. We made it. Yeah.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

DIANA: I just thought of the idea of, like, you just putting on clown makeup right now. Like, we should just. Oh, my God.

ADRIANA: Like a clown for a conference.

DIANA: No, we have a...SIG-clown.

TIM: Oh, man. Right now you're gonna lose...you lose a lot of people on that one.

ADRIANA: Okay.

ADRIANA: We got. We got the thumbs down on that.

DIANA: Oh, my gosh. Companies. I actually really wanted this because someone brought it up to me. In case you don't know. I wear false lashes to a lot of conferences. Like, I love...No, I take hair and I glue it onto my eyelid.

ADRIANA: When you describe it that way, it just sounds so enticing. I know.

DIANA: It is. Yeah. And I just styled them differently every time.

ADRIANA: There you go.

DIANA: Sometimes I snip them. Sometimes, like, layers.

ADRIANA: I'm very scared of false lashes.

DIANA: Yeah. But I was saying, imagine, like, a company actually had that as swag, and they branded the lashes as swag. I would. I would be on that. It's such a good idea. We got the confirmation. We got an investor. All right, over here.

ADRIANA: Well, because, I mean, conference swag. Like, we've bitched about this before. The conference t-shirts. Anyone who's organizing a conference, for the love of God, and thank goodness. I would say, like, the last few KubeCons, Open Source Summits, at least made an effort to have, like, fitted and non-fitted t-shirts.

DIANA: Or at least smaller sizes available.

ADRIANA: Yeah, smaller sizes. And I prefer the fitted for myself because, I don't know, I like to look cute in my conference t-shirts. And, you know, I was at a thing, a work thing last year where they made these t-shirts, and they were really cool. And so I'm like, oh, I want one. And the guy who was taking orders he's like, what size? I'm like, well, do you have, like, extra small fitted? And he's like, nah, they're baggy, but you can just wear it around the house. I'm like, don't trigger me. Don't say this stuff to me. Like, I want to look cute around the house. Not look like a frigging bum when I'm around the house.

DIANA: But even then, why wouldn't you want us to wear it in public? For your thing?

ADRIANA: Yeah. So I was like, I was so, so angry. I'm like, forget it. I don't want a t-shirt. Like, no, no, it fits me or not.

DIANA: Yeah, yeah. I definitely feel like I end up getting left with the options of, like, oh, do you want a maxi skirt size t-shirt or a, like, clubbing dress? Like a maxi dress or, like, a clubbing dress size t-shirt based on whatever sizes they have left?

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah.

DIANA: Um, and that kind of sucks, but that is what it is.

ADRIANA: It does.

DIANA: Although sometimes I don't really blame them, because different, uh, what is it? Vendors, they have different cuts.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It is tricky. I've having had to order t-shirts for my teams before. I almost had a heart attack trying to find t-shirts that would appeal to, like, all the people, but, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I would like more conference swag. That's like, you know, a little bit of. A little more femininity. I mean, girls attend conferences, too.

DIANA: What?

ADRIANA: Well, I know, right?

DIANA: Oh, my goodness. Recently, I was at a conference, and I was talking to someone who said it was hilarious. The one time that they went to this, like, huge, several thousand people conference, and whoever the performer was, they were like, this one goes out to all the ladies. Yeah, I see all 14 of you. That's right. Yep. I see y'all. And mind you, there's, like, thousands of people, and he and this performer, like, they knew. They knew.

ADRIANA: Oh my God, he zeroed in on it.

DIANA: Yeah.

ADRIANA: That's hilarious.

DIANA: Yeah, no, that was great, though.

ADRIANA: It's like, the bathroom lines at conferences.

DIANA: Oh, yeah. Like, very. It's a good problem to have when the lines are longer.

ADRIANA: Yeah, that's true. Although I I have to say that I do enjoy, like, not spending forever.

DIANA: Oh, yeah.

ADRIANA: But, yes, I I agree. Longer bathroom lines means that we're getting more ladies out. And one thing that, like, I have liked about KubeHuddle is we've had a good percentage of the ladies at the conference, which is really good.

DIANA: I didn't want to be, like, predatorial, but I was like, oh, my gosh. These girls, like, dressed in things other than their company tees and jeans. And unfortunately, I wasn't able to hunt them down to, like, do a reel about it, but I would have loved to do that.

ADRIANA: Yeah. Yeah. We're kind of all over the place. Yeah, it's been a busy. Yeah, it's been busy organizing KubeHuddle. And this is, like, your second KubeHuddle that you've organized.

DIANA: It is. And this is your, like, your first and you. Yeah. In case y'all didn't know, she put together both panels.

ADRIANA: Yeah. And in case people don't know, Diana is based out of Denver, right?

DIANA: I am. I am. And I'm not as good of a climber than you, for sure. It sucks. I actually started. I did. I had a. I had a movement pass for a couple of months, and then I had, like, some stupid surgery.

DIANA: It was, like, super minor, but I also couldn't do physical things. And then I never get my nails done.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

DIANA: But of course, the one time that I decided to get into Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, I got my nails done, and so I just like, not doing all these activities that I wish I had done, but I'll come around to it eventually. SIG-climbers. SIG-climbers.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I think there is a SIG-climbing.

DIANA: Oh, really?

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, yeah, there is. There is. Although usually, like, I'm kind of a lone wolf boulderer, so. But I'll go, like, with a small crew for...actually, Marino's been my bouldering buddy for the last several conferences. Or last two, I guess. So for the last KubeCon and for Open Source Summit, I dragged him out early in the morning because that's the only time you can go when you're at a conference.

DIANA: Yeah, I sleep in.

ADRIANA: Yeah. I mean, normally I do, too. Like, you know...

DIANA: You have, like, so much self control and discipline while I'm here. Like, I sleep.

ADRIANA: I normally like to sleep in in the mornings, but for conferences, I'm like. I'm. I'm obsessed enough with bouldering that I'll just like, okay. I'll wake up at some God awful time to go.

DIANA: Is that, like, your thing?

ADRIANA: That is my thing. That's my, like, center. Yeah, yeah, that and capys. Yeah.

DIANA: Have you ever seen one?

ADRIANA: Yes. Okay, so here in Toronto, there is a zoo in one of the...we have, like, this big park not too far from here, and there are capys at the zoo, and they're just chilling. Yeah, yeah. And actually, as a birthday present, Hannah and my husband took me to see the capys and. But they didn't tell me where we were going, so, like, we went on the subway, and then they blindfolded me. And so when we exited the subway, I was, like, blindfolded walking to this park, having no freaking clue.

DIANA: I would be terrified.

ADRIANA: It was a little scary.

DIANA: Not...not because of them. Like, you know, if it was anyone else that I didn't know, I'd be like, okay, I might die. But no, even if it was someone I knew, I would get scared just because I'm, like, over sensitive when I can't be or, you know, when I lose some sense. I'm oversensitive in the worst way.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was really freaky. And having to trust people to, like, guide you and, like, oh, watch your step when you're walking through here and don't, like, step on dog crap.

DIANA: Yeah.

ADRIANA: Oh, yeah. They were trying. They tried to, like, disorient me. I kind of figured out what they were up to, like, partway in just because I know them, but it was still a great surprise. And, like, they...honestly, capys are, like, majestic creatures.

DIANA: They're, like, giant rat, but they're, like, so chill.

ADRIANA: They're so chill. They've got, like, this resting bitch face.

DIANA: Of, like, yo, have you seen the reels lately?

ADRIANA: Oh, my God. Like, I subscribe to very...to many capy IG accounts.

DIANA: Yeah, the ones are just sitting there in the tub, and there's water on them, and they're just.

ADRIANA: And they're like, ugh. Or, like, ducks, like, pecking at them, and they're like, come at me, bro.

DIANA: You know who I was actually really surprised had never seen a goat.

ADRIANA: Who?

DIANA: Kunal.

ADRIANA: Oh.

DIANA: Up until, like, last year, like, a couple months ago, he had never seen a goat. That's why I was curious. If you've ever seen a capy before.

ADRIANA: That's a fair question to ask. And they're a super common animal.

DIANA: I don't think I've even seen one, but, like, everyone knows what these animals look like.

ADRIANA: See it live. Yeah.

DIANA: But in. In practice, like, I'm thinking, have I ever seen one? I don't think I've ever seen. No, I've seen a goat for sure, but I've never seen a capy. Is this some state animal?

ADRIANA: If you're here in Toronto longer, I don't know when you leave, but there's the High Park Zoo, and they have capys.

DIANA: Are capys from Toronto?

ADRIANA: No, they're from South America.

DIANA: Oh. What?

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

DIANA: What are they doing here?

ADRIANA: Chillin in the zoo.

DIANA: Okay.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

DIANA: Like, wandering free. Because I don't get.

ADRIANA: No, no, they're not. No, they're. These ones aren't wandering free. Like, they have, like, different animals on display. I mean, yeah, they have, like, a, you know, kind of a pen, a fenced in pen area where they. They wander free. I think there's, like, a pair of them.

DIANA: Oh.

ADRIANA: And they just chill, and it's...

DIANA: But in South America, are they wandering free like the guinea pig?

ADRIANA: Yeah. So in. So in Rio, there's, like, a part of Rio called Lagoa where apparently they roam freely, which now I, like, I have renewed reason to return so that I can see them solely for that. Solely for that.

DIANA: I mean, morbid question, but are they. Do people eat of them the way. The way guinea pigs are over there, like, as common?

ADRIANA: Oh, that's a good question. I don't know. I I've never heard of people eating a capybara.

DIANA: Okay. I mean, I didn't know that people eat guinea pigs as commonly as they were until I met or I knew a friend who went to Peru for a hot minute.

ADRIANA: Oh.

DIANA: And they were just like, yeah, eating Guinea pics.

ADRIANA: But they're so cute and cuddly.

DIANA: Have you ever had balut?

ADRIANA: What?

DIANA: Balut?

ADRIANA: No, I don't think so.

DIANA: Yeah. How would you describe balut? In case I can't hear it, I'll repeat you.

TIM: So balut.

DIANA: Balut.

TIM: A preserved fertilized...

DIANA: There we go. Preserved fertilized duck egg. There it is.

TIM: And not fertilized, but, like, this duck is basically fully formed.

DIANA: Not always. I don't like the fully formed.

TIM: I said basically, but almost always. That's what you get, right? It's not a bloody yolk.

DIANA: It is.

TIM: You got feathers, you got bones, you got bill, you got the...

DIANA: You need to try it in, like, cooked in tamarind sauce.

TIM: No, stop.

DIANA: In tamarind sauce. You don't really taste all that.

TIM: I grew up around a lot of Filipinos. When I was coming up in my neighborhood in Virginia, I tried balut several times. Several ways, and not one of them was even close to palatable.

ADRIANA: Wow.

DIANA: I respect the fact that you're willing to try.

TIM: That's like, ever tried it like this? I'm like, y'all...

ADRIANA: So balut. So fertilized duck. Developed, Developed, Developed duck in egg.

DIANA: Yeah.

ADRIANA: So you eat it in the egg?

DIANA: Yeah. So you crack the top. So you take a little spoon, and you crack it on top, and then you take a shot of the broth like you would a shot of tequila.

ADRIANA: There is a broth.

DIANA: There's a broth.

TIM: It's not broth..

ADRIANA: It's the thing that the duck is in.

TIM: I mean, technically, I guess it's a broth. It's the duck juice.

HANNAH: What are you talking about? When people do, like, the duck eggs. When the duck is...

ADRIANA: Of course Hannah knows about this because of Instagram, right?

HANNAH: Probably YouTube.

ADRIANA: Sorry, sorry.

DIANA: Obviously not Instagram. Speaking of old, like old with social media, I remember back then, this was, like, maybe a decade ago, my niece was telling me how she was telling her friend something. Something Facebook. And her friend was like, who still uses Facebook? And she was like, my aunt. I was still in my twenties then. I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure they're like, well, my aunt. And they just made me sound like a dinosaur from that. And I was like, I'm pretty sure Facebook is still hip. Okay, now that I say it out loud...

ADRIANA: I mean, Hannah's on Facebook, but she does it to troll my husband. She calls it old people social media.

DIANA: It is still happening.

ADRIANA: You want to hear something depressing about feeling old? So at the speaker dinner yesterday, Renata and I were talking to somebody, and it happens that she's going to the same university that I went to for school. And I'm like, yeah, I graduated in 2001. And she's like, I was born in 2001. I just died right there. Yeah, yeah, that was uh...

DIANA: But I think a lot of things are changing in a very short amount of time. Or at least I saw myself that to make myself feel better, because then I'll talk to someone who now goes to my alma mater, and they'll say something. And I was like, oh, that building didn't even exist when I went there. But that's probably because it got built the next year that I left.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. We were trading stories of, yeah, that building was a parking lot when I was there.

DIANA: After I left is when it manifested.

ADRIANA: It's always better after you leave. Like, we had dumpy ass facilities at my school, and then it's like, oh, you get two new buildings. I'm like, great, thanks.

DIANA: So is there anything that's very specific that, you know, happened like that?

ADRIANA: Yeah, we got two new buildings after I left.

DIANA: I don't. I'm guessing those buildings got built after I left, but one of the colleges that I was in. So you have, like, your main college, which is UC San Diego, and then within that, you are split up into, like, Harry Potter houses.

ADRIANA: Okay.

DIANA: Which is, honestly, that's kind of what it was. Now that I'm thinking about it, that is exactly what it was. So my college was called 6th college. It didn't even have a name.

ADRIANA: That's sad.

DIANA: Yeah. And then by the time I left and I was like, 6th college and like, what is that? I actually don't know what it's called now.

ADRIANA: That's when you feel old. I know, I know. But, you know, it means that we've, you know, we've come up in the world. We have. We are like a fine wine.

DIANA: I'll take it. I'll take it. Especially, like, you've been around for a while, not like you're just very knowledgeable and I feel like you have a lot to share with the community. And so anytime I see you and just like, your talks are just walking around, I learn a lot from you.

ADRIANA: Thank you.

DIANA: Yes, yes. And I hope that one day I can pass on the same knowledge outside of people knowing I use Facebook. Are you not on...are you not on the Facebook Tim?

TIM: I still have a Facebook account because my water burger account is tied to it.

DIANA: Okay. Fair. Priorities.

TIM: And for the marketplace and because, like, some, because I still have messenger because of Jiu-Jitsu contact.

DIANA: Okay.

ADRIANA: I have Messenger. I have a Facebook account that I haven't logged in in ten years.

TIM: The only time I ever open up Facebook is to go to the marketplace.

DIANA: Yeah. Have you been using, like, have you ever used other platforms to buy or sell use things and had any weird experiences?

ADRIANA: No, because, so this is like, my oldness is like, this is too weird for me where I'm like, I don't want to, like, buy and sell stuff.

DIANA: Can we give Hazel a cameo?

ADRIANA: Oh, yeah, Hazel can make Hazel come. Make a cameo.

DIANA: Make a cameo, please. They probably can't hear you because we're mic'd.

ADRIANA: Yeah, we're mic'd. But, you know, everyone's like, photobomb video bombed.

DIANA: Hazel's glowed up today.

ADRIANA: Super, super fancy.

DIANA: Oh, yeah. You two are matching.

ADRIANA: For anyone who's listening. They're not going to get the visual experience of Hannah and Hazel matching on the green.

DIANA: Yes.

ADRIANA: Super swank.

DIANA: And then just imagine people who are only watching, not hearing the sound.

ADRIANA: I know.

DIANA: Yeah.

ADRIANA: Like this, this conversation is just like gone everywhere, which I love because I think, you know, one of the things about tech is, like, sometimes we take it too seriously and I think we need to have more fun. I mean, we have a mental health panel going on later today.

DIANA: Is it coming up? Do we need a...yeah.

ADRIANA: Well, I guess we need to wrap up.

TIM: I was just going to walk over. Them like, where are this?

TIM: Yeah, you know, the girlies, they're doing the selfies for the camera, for the social medias.

DIANA: For The Facebook. We'll email you.

ADRIANA: This is, like, the most off the cuff, like, episode of Geeking Out, and it's, like, all kinds of wonderful, and I'm embracing the wackiness of it. So since we need to wrap up, because we have a mental health panel that I'm live streaming soon, do you have any words of wisdom for our audience or hot takes?

DIANA: Hot takes. Hot takes. Be hot. I mean, I didn't really love it.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

DIANA: I didn't really think of that as a articulated thing that we do, but ever since, I mean, I. I said before, I'll say it again. Leanne Lee. She literally said this during our all women's panel last year. She just turns to me and she was like, I. What did she say exactly? She was like, I admire your courage to be hot and smart, and those are just things that I didn't really like...those are not adjectives I affiliate myself with in the tech space. Like, I'll have my, like, daily affirmations or whatever. Yeah, the fact that someone said it out loud. No, but the fact that someone said it out loud, I was like, no. If that's what you think about me, then that is definitely, like, what I feel about other women and more, and in some cases, even men who are, like, amazing allies towards us.

ADRIANA: I love it. I love it. That's okay.

DIANA: Be hot.

ADRIANA: Yeah, be hot. Yeah.

DIANA: Inner hotness or outer, who knows?

ADRIANA: Or. Yeah, that's true.

DIANA: That's true.

ADRIANA: Awesome. Awesome. All right, well, thank you, Diana, for geeking out with me today, y'all don't forget to subscribe, y'all. I'm getting fun of so badly.

DIANA: I don't even know what to do.

ADRIANA: Y'all, don't forget to subscribe. And be sure to check out the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media.

DIANA: Until next time, peace out and geek out.

ADRIANA: Geeking Out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Villela. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking Out is also produced by my daughter, Hannah Maxwell, who, incidentally, designed all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the socials by going to bento.me/geekingout.

The One Where We Geek Out on Owning the Stage with Lian Li

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Adriana Villela, Hannah Maxwell, Lian Li) — Tue, 28 May 2024 04:00:00 +0000

About our guest:

Lian (she/they) is a Developer Advocate and community organizer, probably best known for creating Kuberoke, the first and only Kubernetes Karaoke Community. Earlier in her career, Lian worked as a community manager and quality manager for various browser games. In recent years, she moved into the Cloud Native space, working as a Cloud Native Engineer, and then as an Engineering Manager. In October 2021, she turned her passion for community and developer happiness into a profession, by breaking into Developer Advocacy for Developer Tools. Lian is also an active member in various communities, including being part of the organization teams of DevOpsDays and ServerlessDays Amsterdam, as well as the ServerlessDays core team. In 2023, she was elected Technical Lead for the CNCF Technical Advisory Group (TAG) on Cloud Native App Delivery, focused on outreach and enabling new members for the TAG.

Find our guest on:

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show notes:

Additional notes:

Transcript:

LIAN: Hi. Thanks for having me.

ADRIANA: I'm so excited to have you on. And we are actually recording at KubeHuddle today.

LIAN: Yay.

ADRIANA: Yay. So very exciting. So we are actually both in Toronto. So as we...before we get started into the meaty bits, I always like to start off with my guests answering some lightning round questions. So are you a lefty or a righty?

LIAN: Righty.

ADRIANA: Do you prefer iPhone or Android?

LIAN: I have an iPhone. I prefer...it's more practical.

ADRIANA: Fair enough, fair enough. It's funny, some guests are like, no, this is it. Like, I am staunchly in favor of this or the other. And others are like...eh?

LIAN: I'm almost embarrassed that I have an iPhone, but I have so many Apple devices. Just made sense. But I don't. I don't want to. I don't want people to think I'm a cult member.

ADRIANA: Fair enough. I get it, I get it. Okay, next question. Mac, Linux, or windows? Which do you prefer?

LIAN: I guess I just answered my question.

ADRIANA: I think so.

LIAN: I was very against MacBooks a long time, but then I had one and it was actually...I had to give a presentation. It was so much easier on a MacBook with Keynote and everything. So since then I've been like, it's easier. Why make your life hard just for street cred?

ADRIANA: Yeah, fair enough, fair enough. Okay, next question. What's your favorite programming language?

LIAN: I have to say it's probably JavaScript. There's a lot of things that are weird with JavaScript, but it's the first language that I really understood. Yeah, that's, you know, it's like your first love. Yeah, you always feel very special about that one. And I just think that the way that, you know, the, the whole events are working, it's just really cool.

ADRIANA: Nice. Awesome. My first language was BASIC.

LIAN: Oh, wow.

ADRIANA: So from the olden days.

LIAN: I wasn't gonna say old, but I mean, does.

ADRIANA: Anyone even code in BASIC anymore?

LIAN: Like, I don't know, but the people who are making a lot of money, I think because there's no one there anymore, I can maintain it.

ADRIANA: Yeah, we are an extinct or endangered species. I don't think I could even remember how to code in BASIC anymore.

LIAN: I've never been able to do it.

ADRIANA: All right, next question. Do you prefer dev or ops?

LIAN: Well, hmm. I think at this point I prefer dev. I haven't been, like, developing production code for a long time, and just the other day I was just solving an engineering problem and it was. Made me so happy really, going in there, reading documentation, finding something out, coding something, and then it works. It really reminded me where I got into this business in the first place. That's so awesome.

ADRIANA: I love that. Like, honestly, what makes me happy is like whenever I'm, like, doing actual dev for my job, like, if I go through stretches where I'm not doing it, I actually get really depressed.

LIAN: Yeah, I can. I can imagine. For sure. Yeah. This is so much fun. It gives you that sense of satisfaction.

ADRIANA: Yes, yes. And even if, like, you're the only one who knows about the problem that you solved, then it's like, I did it!

LIAN: You also look at your code afterwards and just be like, oh, that was. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they did something well.

ADRIANA: Yeah, totally, totally relate. Okay, next question. Do you prefer JSON or YAML?

LIAN: What are these questions? Is tabs versus space is the last...Okay, that is JSON, I guess JSON, because again, JavaScript world. Yeah. But also you don't have these weird indentation things where, you know, like, because it made an indenture error, then you. YAML is invalid. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That doesn't really happen with JSON. Probably that. Although I think YAML is a subset of JSON.

ADRIANA: Yeah, true.

LIAN: I know. Oh my God.

ADRIANA: I know. Which is a bit of a mind fuck.

LIAN: No. Right?

ADRIANA: Like, really, you're related?

LIAN: Yeah. So really there is no real answer to this, because YAML is JSON.

ADRIANA: That's true. That's true. That's a good one. Okay, next question. Spaces or tabs?

LIAN: Spaces. Spaces. I did not. I was pro tabs for a long time, but then someone explained to me that was basis...It's better for accessibility, apparently. I forgot why, but, you know, that's good enough for me.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I was team tabs for a while, but then I converted to spaces.

LIAN: Yeah, and just stick with it, whatever you choose.

ADRIANA: Exactly, exactly.

LIAN: Okay, is the next question VIM versus EMACS? Because I don't have an opinion on that.

ADRIANA: No, it's not. It's not. Okay...do you prefer to consume content through video or text?

LIAN: Oh, um, it depends, but probably video mostly. Sometimes though, you know, I. I want to take my time. That's when I want to read something.

ADRIANA: Yeah, fair enough. Okay, final question. What is your superpower?

LIAN: Oh, okay. Hey, I actually have a podcast myself that is about superpower, like, basically what superpowers people have.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah.

LIAN: But I only recorded like three episodes. Don't...don't watch. What's my superpower? I think I am...so when people ask me what I do for work and they're not, like, in this...sphere...space...I sometimes tell them I'm a professional friend maker. And I think that's what I'm good at is like making people feel at ease and let them have them open up about things that they love and they're passionate about, about their problems, which I think is a big part of DevRel.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah.

LIAN: So I feel like that is probably what also, like, sets me apart from other people in tech.

ADRIANA: That's awesome. And you know what? Like, I met you last year at KubeHuddle, and I remember, like, right away feeling at ease, chatting with, you.

LIAN: I do have a couple of tricks for that. It's not just like, I'm not like a natural people...you know, please or something like that. But I do feel like, especially in this industry, that if you really make an effort to get to know people, you can feel that people are just really open to that and they really want to have that relationship. It's just that for some reason, we're kind of shy about it.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I agree. You know, like, one of the things I always think about, and I think I've read this somewhere where, like, introverts just want, like, an extroverted person to adopt them. And for me, like, I'm naturally introverted. And so I love it when I see someone who has a friendly face where I feel like they're super approachable and it's like, oh, come adopt me. Yeah.

LIAN: And then, like, you can almost become not an extrovert, but you can get into that same energy also. Yeah, I love to do that after conferences, like, just like, organize a small dinner, for example, there's like, maybe 20 people. Not everyone, obviously. And that's when you can, like, create so many great, you know, relationships. And I love to also then bring in new people, especially, like, maybe there's some...someone who's been at the first conference.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: Was very new into this. And I love to, like, bring them into, like, a group of people who maybe, like, are already a bit further along in their career and, like, these small relationships, like, these small things, either the most valuable.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: Events like this.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. That's awesome. And I think it's a good segue too, into, like, some of the stuff that you've been doing recently. So. Yeah. Why don't you tell folks, like, some, because you, you've made some big changes in your life. Yeah.

LIAN: So, yeah, I've been in tech for most of my professional life, like 15 plus years, and seen a lot. But it is...it can be a grind. It can be very demanding, especially in DevRel. Lots of travel, lots of...it's like people you have to be on all the time. Also at conferences like this, people will approach you because they want to talk about your product, whatever, and you just have to always be approachable, friendly, you know, like, always be there and. Yeah, end of last year, November, I was just, like, really close to burnout, which is something we're going to talk about later.

ADRIANA: We are.

LIAN: And I just decided to take a break.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: So I quit my job, and, and at the same time, I was doing, like, as a hobby, like amateur stage performance stuff. So I was doing improv theater in the ensemble of a musical group, and that was a lot of fun. And I just kind of, like, decided to just do that for a while.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: The entire time I was thinking this is like a vacation. Yeah, eventually I have to go back to tech.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: But, you know, at some point, I was like, I don't actually have to do anything. You know, I can just do whatever I want to do.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: And, you know, as long as it's fun and enjoy it and, you know, like, I can still pay my mortgage and everything, it's gonna be fine. So I have been basically doing only stage performance since November, which is now, I don't know when it's gonna come out, but, like, about half a year almost. And I really enjoy it. I still keep with the tech industry a little bit.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: Like, I go to conferences. Yeah, I'm with the technical advisory group of the CNCF on app delivery. So I'm doing some community stuff because I really enjoy community stuff, but I am very happy to not have to always chase the next thing, which is, like, a big part of, I think, what we do in startups as vendors in the Cloud Native space, DevRel specifically. So, yeah, it's taking a bit of a break, but also, like, reorientating myself in the world.

ADRIANA: Yeah. Yeah. That's so awesome. And so, like, I'm curious for, you know, you've been part of, like, ensemble cast, so is it like a musical ensemble? So, like, did you already have, like, a background in singing? I mean, you. You do like, Kuberoke, right? That...that's like one of your...that's one of your...

LIAN: That's my claim to fame.

ADRIANA: Your claim to fame.

LIAN: Yeah, exactly. I mean, I did...I always loved...okay, I always wanted to be, like, an actor.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: Even as a child. But my parents were not very pro because they're, like, they're Chinese parents, so they're very much, like, you should learn something proper and, like, have a proper job. But I always was very musical. I play, like, multiple musical instruments. I was, like, singing in, like, church choirs, and then the whole karaoke thing started, and, I mean, I'm not a strong dancer, but I do okay. So this is, like, an amateur group. So they were doing, like, boot camps, musical theater bootcamps. You can just try it.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: And then they were running open auditions, and to my surprise, honestly, no one was as surprised as I was. I got into the ensemble.

ADRIANA: Oh, cool.

LIAN: And, I mean, I wasn't...we were all singing, but we weren't all mic'd, so I didn't have a mic, and it was just basically dancing. And one of the things that I really found very interesting is that in that theater world, and I can't speak if that's the same everywhere, but, like, in this particular group, the...it's...it might not seem super diverse in that sense, because it's all about being at the right place at the right time. So obviously going to the auditions, and already people may not like you for whatever reason, like, you remind them of your...of their ex-wife or something that can happen, and it's totally reasonable for them to then say, I don't know...I don't like the vibe or whatever that happens. And I've just gotten really lucky that I was in the right place at the right time. So now, basically, in the ensemble group, I got a featured dancing spot.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: My dance is not that great, but they didn't have enough men, so I was basically playing a guy.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: And now I'm doing another musical, which is Monty Python Spamalot.

ADRIANA: Oh, cool!

LIAN: I love it. So fun. And this similar thing, like, the...because I was there and, like, standing in for Lancelot because he missed some rehearsals.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: They basically asked me, like, if I wanted to understudy for Lancelot.

ADRIANA: Oh, cool.

LIAN: So now I'm getting, like, one show where I can play Lancelot, and I'm freaking out over it, of course, because it's gonna be, like, a proper kind of leading.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: Role. But on the other hand, I was really freaking out, like, feeling all the imposter syndrome stuff, you know, like, because I'm not trained in any way. And a lot of the people, even though it's amateur, they're very good. They have a lot of experience, and they're like, trained. But then I realized, you know, when new speakers come up to me because I also do speaking workshops, I always tell them, you know, if the program committee wants you, there's no reason for you to doubt yourself.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: Because they're making the decision. They look at your talk, they maybe look at your speaking experience, and they will say, we think this is great. Why don't you do it?

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: And I was, like, just basically telling me the same thing. Like, if the director thinks that I can do it, I can probably do it.

ADRIANA: Right. Right.

LIAN: You just, like, need to show up and do the work and eventually hope you will...it's always a mix between luck and hard work.

ADRIANA: Yeah. Yeah. That's so cool. Yeah. And it's so many parallels with tech, right? Ridiculous.

LIAN: 100% - it's so...there are some things that are very similar, like, you know, the speaking and also the trying to convey something to me. Like, it's always been public speaking has always been stage performance to me.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: Because you're really trying to entertain people. It's not just about giving information, but, like, giving information in a way that really engages.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: Like, makes people feel things.

ADRIANA: Yeah. Yeah.

LIAN: So that. I definitely see that in there. And what I also learned, which was very cool, when you're doing rehearsals, it's not about knowing every single line by heart, always, but it's more like, the director will give you, like, specific directions. Like, I want you to, like, be that kind of character. I want you to, like, convey that kind of feeling.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: And then, because on opening night, or, like, all the performances that you have, you will never have a perfect...everyone remembers all of their lines. Everyone stands in exactly the right way, and, like, the lighting is perfect. That will never happen. So instead, we are trying to, like, give everyone enough information that they can be autonomous.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: And make the right decision at the right time, knowing what is it that the director wants from me.

ADRIANA: Right.

LIAN: And I was thinking about. Actually, I'm thinking about, like, a talk about this, where if we did this for very critical situations, let's say, like, feature releases or deployments, you know, instead of just, like, having this process and no one's allowed to move, like, deviate from it.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: Give everyone the knowledge and the autonomy and the power to do the best thing that they can in their role and just, like, trust that you will bring it together, because in the end, a show is only as good as its weakest cast member.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: Everyone needs to help each other out and make sure that if I see something's missing, right of me, I'm not waiting for the person to step up. I can do it. I'll just step up and bring it together. I really love that.

ADRIANA: That's awesome.

LIAN: That was a long story.

ADRIANA: That's so cool, though. And I guess also as part of that, because no two shows are the same. Like, there's some, I guess, sometimes improvisation that needs to take place because of the unexpected things.

LIAN: Exactly. And sometimes that is the best part of the show. So, like, in Cinderella, which is, you know, you would think that Cinderella is, like, a pretty boring, kind of, like, Disney princess kind of show, but it's actually, like, the musical is actually very funny, and there's a lot of space, especially for the characters, to improvise a little bit and to really get into who their character is.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: You know, like, Cinderella has two step sisters. One is kind of, like, not very smart.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: But ditzy. And the other one is a bit more. She, like, she has a character arc. She becomes a bit more of a friend person.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: And then they were different every single show. Like, they, like, there were small scenes where they were supposed to react and they reacted differently every single time. And over time, we would also. Because we had six shows in four days.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: So by the third show, we would...we would know, like, this works very well with the audience, so let's, like, build on top of that a little bit. Every ensemble member also got, like, a little bit of a tiny backstory.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: We had this, like, huge marketplace scene, and there was this, like, situation where one guy had, like, four girlfriends and they were finding out about each other.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: So even though they were, like, background characters.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: They had their own thing going, which made it seem much more, like, alive. Yeah.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah.

LIAN: Multidimensional. And I think that's kind of, like, what I'm feeling with tech also is, like, just because you're not always in doing the most important things or always in the foreground making the big decisions doesn't mean that there's nothing that you can fulfill, you know, in your own little corner. Yeah.

ADRIANA: Oh, so great!

LIAN: It's so fun! Honestly, if you can do any kind of, like, stage performance stuff, I highly recommend it because it's so much fun to just go out there. Yeah.

ADRIANA: And get out of your own...kind of...head.

LIAN: Right. Different person. That's a lot of fun because also that will tell you, like, you get to try things and maybe you will also see, oh, I actually enjoy being a bit more extroverted in these circumstances.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: And you meet a lot of fun people.

ADRIANA: That's true. That's true. Well, you know, I have to say, like, so earlier today, I attended your workshop at KubeHuddle on owning the stage.

LIAN: Yes.

ADRIANA: And it was like, a series of, like, improv exercises, which were so fun because, so my daughter Hannah had taken when she was younger, she took a bunch of, like, improv classes, and so I was familiar with some of the exercises because I'd see her showcases.

LIAN: Nice.

ADRIANA: And I'm like, oh, my God, how cool is it to, like, be on the other side of it, not being a spectator, but a participant.

LIAN: Yeah.

ADRIANA: And it was just so much fun to just, like, do goofy things and, like, you created such a safe space for everyone, and it, like, I. You know, if you ever take your workshop on the road, like, I hope you do, because it was...it was great.

LIAN: Thank you. I will give the same workshop in DevOps Days Amsterdam.

ADRIANA: Oh, nice.

LIAN: And KCD Munich, I think. I mean, it's very different from a tech conference normally, so I'm really glad that, you know, the people who came were very into it because it was a bit like, you know, we were moving and dancing and. Yeah, that's not very comfortable for a lot of...even when we were, like, in the ensemble, in the musical theater cast of people who want to do musical theater, even then, sometimes it's awkward.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: You're not, like, that comfortable with each other yet. Like, it's always the thing about vulnerability and. Am I comfortable showing that side of me? Yeah, because this is a...when we're on stage, and this is something that I'm struggling with a lot when we're on stage, as a public speaker, you're supposed to be serious.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: You're supposed to be trustworthy and, like, professional.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah.

LIAN: And that is true to some extent, but I think that it doesn't hurt to be a bit goofy and, you know, like, letting loose. I think that works again with the creating this, like, as you say, like, a safe space or just, like. Like, make people feel at ease. Like, let's not take this too serious. Yeah, yeah, I think that's. You're setting the tone when you're on stage, right? Everyone's looking to you, so...Yeah, I think it really. It really just helps to do that. And, like, not taking tech that seriously as a whole is also something that I learned. It's like, you know, like, it's...it's...it's good if you like what you do and you're taking, like, what you do seriously, but in the end, there's much more to life than tech.

ADRIANA: Yeah. Yeah, I completely agree. And I think bringing a bit of levity into tech because, like, I like, as somebody with ADHD who gets bored, like, so easily, like, I have a hard time sitting through a talk.

LIAN: Right.

ADRIANA: So, like, the fact that your workshop had us up and about and doing things, like, those 45 minutes went by so fast. And, like, for me, as a speaker, when I give a talk, I want to bring, like, my energy and, like, funness to the talk. Like, I've done...I did one where, like, my co-speaker and I did a skit as part of our talk and then another one where we recorded a video, like, in Office Space style, just to break it up a bit. So it's kind of nice to see, like, you know...

LIAN: Yeah.

ADRIANA: You're doing something similar, like, bringing that funness and breaking the monotony out of tech is, like, tech is fun.

LIAN: It is.

ADRIANA: Why shouldn't we make our talks fun?

LIAN: I know. Why are we trying. This is so weird to me sometimes. Like, why are we trying to make it less fun, more boring, more, like, harder?

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: I think there's, like, this gatekeeping maybe also going on where we're trying to make it seem harder than it actually is.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: Programming, I think. Not saying it's easy, but it's not difficult. It's not, like, complicated, actually. Like, you can learn it. And I know a lot of people learned that, you know, in a bootcamp in a couple of weeks, and it's just like, maybe by using less, like, complicated words, like, technical terms, make it more approachable. And, like, also for my workshop, I really want...because there's this whole other thing about diversity, which, you know, you had a panel about this as well, where, let's say, women, that's my experience, are not encouraged to speak up, especially your experience as a woman or as a person of color. You're asked often to hide it because no one wants to hear it. People are tired of it. They don't want to listen to it. So there's a big part of you that you always feel like you can't really show because it's something that people don't want to, you know, don't want to talk about.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: I want also for people to just feel comfortable to take that space again.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: And to be that weird version of themselves.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: Very unique to everyone. Like, it doesn't matter if you're, like, diverse in that sense. Like, diversity, to me, is more about, like, what is something that you bring to the table that hasn't existed there before. And in theater, diversity looks very different because, like, for example, in the English speaking theater scene in Amsterdam, there's a lot of people who you see everywhere, which is very similar to tech also. Tech conferences. Yeah, you see the same people everywhere. It gets a bit monotonous after a while.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: But it's also for the same reasons. Like, the producers of those musicals, they're like, we know this person. You work very well with that person.

ADRIANA: Right.

LIAN: We know they're very talented and hardworking, so we're just gonna, you know, not even cast. We're just gonna put them into their role again.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

LIAN: And they are much more women in musical theater, and there's much more, like, queer people in musical theater, but that doesn't mean it's diverse, because now you have...even though they tick the boxes, they have the platform. They're there all the time. There's a lot of other very talented people who we don't know yet who don't get the same chances because, you know, those spots already filled. So that is a huge parallel that I see to tech, and unfortunately, very surprising to me, it seems that they're not as aware of it as we are in tech.

ADRIANA: Oh, that's so interesting.

LIAN: Right. I thought it was very surprising to me as well. Yeah, there's a lot of, like, there's actually some sexism and racism and, you know, homophobia, transphobia in musical theater, which is, like, really surprising.

ADRIANA: That's so surprising. Yeah, yeah.

LIAN: But, you know, like, it's. That maybe is also just a misconception.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah.

LIAN: Every artist is, like, super progressive.

ADRIANA: Right, right. Wow. Damn, that's pretty wild.

LIAN: But I do have the experience coming from tech now, so.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So now you bring a fresh perspective, which is cool. And, you know, just going back to what you were saying about, like, you know, casting directors choosing people that they're familiar with, or even, like, conference. You know, when you're. When you're on a program committee for selecting speakers for a conference, that, you know, like, you have this bias of, like, oh, my God, I know this person. And they're, like, super cool.

LIAN: Exactly.

ADRIANA: And so, like. And I've found myself on program committees the last, you know, in the last several months, and so I'm trying, like, really hard to, like, make sure that I, you know, put those biases aside, because it can be so easy to fall into those habits and give, like, new speakers a chance. Like, one of the cool things about KubeHuddle is, like, we've got so many students attending, and one of the student speakers, like...what...one of the students was a speaker. Which is very cool. And I think they gave a talk about, like, navigating, like, you know, these big, like, tech events and whatnot, which is so cool. Like, giving, like, these new voices so that they can. They can come up in the industry and have, like, a platform.

LIAN: Yeah, exactly. So, like, exactly. Those, like, new perspectives that you couldn't get from, you know, like, a famous speaker who's gone...been around for a long time. Yeah, yeah. And I'm also...I also organize conferences myself, and I know that you always have to find a balance between, like, you need some big names to pull in, sponsorships to pull in attendees.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: And then you, you know, you want to have, like, maybe an open call for paper so people can just, like, send in, and then maybe you reserve, like, five spots for entirely new speakers you've never spoken before, people who would never get a chance to speak. And then, you know, there's always the risk that it's not a great talk. But you know what? A lot of talks aren't great. You don't know before. Yeah, but I think, again, like, if you think about it, if you make conscious decisions about this beforehand, it just makes a lot of things easier, because then you don't have to scramble after the fact when you're like, oh, shit, we have 40 speakers, and, like, none of them are women.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, like, yeah, exactly.

LIAN: It always happens. And again, there's never going to be the perfect anything. Like, you're never going to have the perfect lineup. So, you know, sometimes you have the same topic, and there's three speakers. One of them is a white guy. One of them is, like, a non binary person who's very famous, and another person, another third person is maybe a first time speaker.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: So maybe you will make, like, a biased decision for whatever reason, and I think that's fine, as long as you're aware this was a biased decision. And maybe I want to, you know, like, mitigate that somewhere else.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, that's also fine. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I think at the end of the day, like, just having a space, too, where you can, like, give...give someone a chance. You know, you and I have been doing the speaking circuit for a while. We had to start somewhere, right? Someone had to give us a chance.

LIAN: Exactly. And I was very lucky because my first talk was at a...at an unconference, which is something that you're also having here, which is great, because, like, I would have not dared to go up on stage. I would have never thought that anyone wanted to listen to me, but because at an unconference, you hand in your proposal and the audience votes on it, I was like, oh, my God.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: Then from there, it was recorded, and the organizers from JSConf Asia saw the talk, and they invited me over to Singapore. And then I didn't realized this is, like, a proper career that you could do.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

LIAN: I was extremely lucky that I got that chance. And I feel like now I almost feel that the need, responsibility to give that. That feeling, because I was an okay engineer. It was fine. But I think once I got into public speaking, that's when I really felt like, this is my space, this is what I'm supposed to do here, that life changing experience for me. So I hope that other people will feel the same way about the public speaking or something. Something else that they love.

ADRIANA: Oh, that's so amazing. Well, thank you. We're coming up on time, but before we finish up, do you have any words of advice that you want to impart on our audience members or hot takes? Either or works.

LIAN: I mean, like, I guess what I've been saying is just, like, do what you want to do. Don't feel weird about, you know, being weird. Um, it's...it's more fun. Life is more fun when you're weird.

ADRIANA: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Embrace the weird. I love it. Cool. Well, thank you, Lian, so much for geeking out with me today.

LIAN: Thanks for having me.

ADRIANA: Thank you. Yeah, I'm glad we're able to track you down, because normally, like, you're based out of Amsterdam and you're running about, and so I'm like, hey, you're gonna be a KubeHuddle.

LIAN: Yeah, I'm not in North America that much because it is kind of exhausting.

ADRIANA: It is a very exhausting trip. So I. Yeah, I totally don't blame you. Well, thank you again. Y'all don't forget to subscribe and be sure to check the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media. Until next time...

LIAN: Peace out and geek out.

ADRIANA: Geeking Out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Villela. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking Out is also produced by my daughter, Hannah Maxwell, who, incidentally, designed all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the socials by going to bento.me/geekingout.

The One Where We Geek Out on Sustainability in Tech with Nancy Chauhan

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Adriana Villela, Hannah Maxwell, Nancy Chauhan) — Tue, 21 May 2024 04:00:00 +0000

About our guest:

Nancy Chauhan is and Engineer & Developer Advocate at LocalStack. She is a CNCF Ambassador. She the founder of the Women in Cloud Native community to encourage diversity and participation of women in tech. She is also part of the CNCF's TAG Sustainability group, resulting from her interest in sustainability in tech. Off duty she loves to play with her cats and loves traveling, exploring new places, culture, and history.

Find our guest on:

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show notes:

CNCF Ambassador Program
Women in Cloud Native
CNCF Technical Advisory Groups (TAGs)
TAG Environmental Sustainability
KubeHuddle
Kepler Project (CNCF)
Cloud Native Sustainability Week
Jakarta, Indonesia is sinking
The Impact of Data Centers on Climate Change
Green Software Foundation (GSF)
If you'd like to host your own sustainability meetup, comment here

Additional notes:

Join CNCF Slack
Join the official cncf-women group on CNCF Slack
Sustainability Week 2024 group on CNCF Slack
Environmental Sustainability whitepaper
Women in Cloud Native Channel on YouTube
Marino Wijay's episode on Geeking Out
KubeHuddle DEI panel promo

Transcript:

ADRIANA: Hey, y'all, welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And geeking out with me today is Nancy Chauhan. Welcome, Nancy!

NANCY: Hey, thank you so much, Adriana. I'm so...I'm super excited for this because I've seen your videos and it's just amazing.

ADRIANA: Oh, my God. I'm so excited to have you here today. And where are you calling from, Nancy?

NANCY: I am from calling from Bangalore, India. It's quite hot here.

ADRIANA: Oh, my God. Yeah, we were just talking...

NANCY: It's very hot.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah. What was the temperature you were saying earlier?

NANCY: It was...it's 38 degrees Celsius. And that's kind of sad because Bangalore is known for the most, you know, like a place in India which has the most moderate temperature, which never crosses, like, 27 or 28 degrees. So it's kind of sad. I mean, global warming and the...has really hit it. I was just, you know, going through the articles and I was really curious that why is it happening? And the reasons are, like, part of the reason is, like, definitely, like, all the environmental changes which are happening. Yeah.

ADRIANA: Yeah, it's so depressing because, like, even in Toronto, like, we've been having, I mentioned earlier when we were chatting beforehand that, like, our summers have gotten hotter. Our winters are practically non-existent. Like, this winter we got snow, but it was like, it's such a wild temperature fluctuation. So you'll have, like, below zero one day and then the next day it's above zero. So any snow that would have fallen melts. And I think we might have had maybe one week consistently below zero. And, like, that's so weird.

NANCY: That's weird. Definitely. That's weird. And this is something which is really important to be considered about, I mean, this topic. Definitely.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah. And I definitely want to dig into that more because I think there's some really awesome stuff that we can dig into around that. Before we do that, I'm going to start with some icebreaker/lightning round questions. I say "slash lightning round" because sometimes they go fast, sometimes they don't. So we'll see how it rolls.

NANCY: Let's see.

ADRIANA: Yeah. All right, first question. Are you a lefty or a righty?

NANCY: I am a righty.

ADRIANA: All right. Do you prefer iPhone or Android?

NANCY: I love Android. I mean, iPhone. I don't like it. It just bounds you to so many things. I mean, just the same ecosystem, but...yeah, yeah.

ADRIANA: All right, cool. Next question. Do you prefer Mac, Linux or Windows?

NANCY: Mac/Linux. Yeah.

ADRIANA: All right, favorite programming language?

NANCY: Python, Go? It keeps changing, I guess, but, yeah, that's something which I'm doing. Yeah.

ADRIANA: Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, it's interesting with programming languages as you, like, pick up new ones, you're like, oh, maybe this is my favorite one. Or there's still the old standby that you love no matter what.

NANCY: Yeah. Because that's what your first language was when you started coding. I mean, that's also there.

ADRIANA: Yeah, that's true. Yeah, there's the nostalgia for that. I completely agree. My first language for...people have heard this podcast...they know my first language was BASIC. Yeah. It was like, I think I first touched it in, like, I want to say 1989 or 1990. So it was like in the olden days. Not the oldest olden days, but it is still like. I mean, I don't even know anyone who writes code in BASIC anymore, but, yeah, I feel nostalgic. Yeah. Okay, next question. Do you prefer Dev or Ops?

NANCY: I prefer Dev. I know, it's both. I mean. Yeah.

ADRIANA: And that's...that's a valid answer, too. You like both. Yeah. Next question. Do you like JSON or YAML?

NANCY: That's a good question. I mean, that's...so I'm going to say, JSON, because I've struggled a lot with YAML. I mean, with all those Kubernetes manifests. I struggled my lifetime, so. Yeah, I don't know. That was like the moment you mentioned YAML and that came in my head. Yeah. And I was like...

ADRIANA: Oh, yeah, it's like PTSD. Yeah, it's funny. The...the people who hate YAML, it's like. Yeah, it's...it's...it's from all those times where you had, like, broken YAML files that caused you, like, hours and hours of pain debugging over a space. Yeah, yeah, I feel your pain. Next question. Spaces or tabs?

NANCY: Tabs. Yeah.

ADRIANA: All right, two more questions left. Do you prefer to consume content through video or text?

NANCY: I think text, although I create content around videos, but I prefer to do when it comes to me, I like text more.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fair enough, fair enough. Yeah. I'm the same way. I do create some video like this, but I'm a text person, even.

NANCY: I like, you know, learning through hands on. That's like the best way. And that's why I like reading as well. I mean, if you have tutorials, that's the best.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree. I'm definitely a hands on learner. I can read everything I want and I'll be like, yeah, I get it. And then you do it and you're like...Yeah. Okay, final question. What is your superpower?

NANCY: Wow. Oh, my God. Did I just, I mean, I just mentioned this word and...okay.

ADRIANA: I know. Like, it's like you're reading my mind.

NANCY: Okay, so, um, so my superpower is that I can do a lot of stuff in one stretch. For example, I can just drive for like 8 hours in a go. And then I can just go to the beach with my friends on like, you know, like just after driving, I can go to the beach with my friends, hang out, and then I can wake up whole night, and then next day also I can do random stuff. So that's, I know, it's like an, it's like exploiting your own body. But then this has like, many a times this has, you know, has been very advantages for me. I mean, like during on calls or maybe, you know, passing my engineering degree. I mean, this superpower has been really, really good for me.

ADRIANA: Yeah. Oh, my God, that's so true. Yeah. Yeah. I keep forgetting like the amount, like on-call aside, you're right that in school wait for long stretches, sometimes pulling all-nighters and...yeah, that's never fun, but that is a good superpower. So basically you have like a seemingly unlimited energy source.

NANCY: Yes. Only for critical things.

ADRIANA: Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. So when, when it's like super important, you're on.

NANCY: Yeah, definitely.

ADRIANA: That's awesome. I love that. All right, well, you've survived the icebreaker/lightning round questions, so, yeah, I think for audience...so first of all, I'm so excited to have gotten to meet you. And we met at KubeCon in Paris in March, and I was so delighted to realize that you were the one who created the CNCF Women group. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

NANCY: Yeah, definitely. So we started the Women in Cloud Native community one year ago. It has been like one year. And the reason why I started this was because I feel like, like the connection between a lot of women is still, because like, there are so many good women out there in different countries and different regions and they're doing amazing work, yet we do not know about them. Somehow this connection is missing because, like, there is so much noise, I mean, there is like so many people out there, so many things happening, that this is something which I feel like lacks because there was this one conference I was in DevOps Days, and then like two people, two women, they came to me and then they asked me that, hey, I just heard your talk. And I realized, oh, you work in this. We really need help in this stuff. And then they...then I realized at that moment, okay, and I just realized that when I was doing my first job, I never realized while working as a DevOps engineer, that engineer there, that I was the only women on the floor. It's just when I left that company, someone just, you know, texted me a very sweet message that, hey, I really love your energy. You are the only women on the floor. And then that's the moment I realized, oh, okay. I mean, that was a very noticeable thing, and that was a part of it. I survived it, and it was somewhere I feel like, you know, we should be in. Be in more touch with other women in tech space and Cloud Native space so that we can inspire each other. We can get inspired from each other's tech journey.

We can also mentor each other in different respects. So that was the main reason of starting the community. And I guess, like, through that community, it was helpful for me as well. I got to know so many women in the community. I got to know about so many things. I remember, like, even the CNCF ambassador program itself, I was unaware of it. And I guess Carol, she. So Carol, she is there. She is also one of the CNFC Ambassadors, and she, you know, put a lot of messages around the release team, around the CNC Ambassador things, and in the Discord channel, which we formed for Women in Cloud Native community. And that's how I also got to know about, okay, there's a release team which exists, and then I quickly applied for it, and a lot of people applied for it, and then I got to know, okay, CNCF Ambassador, I had no clue that what exactly this program is. And that's how I got to know about it. And then there were so many things. I mean, we did a lot of coffee chats with different women, and we had a lot of workshops, and then we started doing a lot of podcast. And that was so helpful, I mean, for other women as well, because, I mean, like, they got to know that, okay, this person exists at the leadership role, and then, you know, they can just go through their journey, and if they're stuck, they can just see their journey. So this whole thing was the idea of creating the Women in Cloud Native Community and, yeah, yeah, that's how it is happening. And there are so many community builders now. I mean, Bhavani Sankita Amoga. I mean, there are so many people who are supporting this community now.

ADRIANA: Yeah, that's so exciting. And I love that you thought of connecting women together because it's, I mean, it seems so obvious when you do it. That's how you know it's a good idea. It's like, oh, yeah, of course. And I...it's been great because I think, like, one of the challenges we still have in our industry is seeing more people who look like us. And, you know, like, I was thinking back even to, like, my own career. Like, I was for the longest time, always prided myself as, like, being one of the few girls in the room, like, ha ha ha with the boys.

And...and then, like, I hit a point in my career. It was when, when I started taking on one of, like, my first leadership roles that I was made painfully aware of the fact that I was a woman. Not...and it was for a negative thing. It was because, like, I had some, like, male colleague who I was, like, I was supervising him, he was undermining me and, and then, and then, like, my manager supported him and not me. And then I'm like, oh, I'm a woman. And it was not a good thing at that point. And it was such a disappointment, disappointing moment in my life. To realize that, like, you know, I'm a woman means I'm different and not like, I'm just like, up until that point in my career, I just thought, like, I'm being treated as an equal and it was never that. I was just made painfully aware at that point. And it was very sad.

NANCY: Yeah. And there are so many things, I mean, which happens, like when I used to go to office, I mean, because you mentioned, and this just reminded me of the similar incident. I mean, there are so many group discussions which eventually naturally happens that women get to left out and there's eventually, you know, the team bonding get...yeah, it's not, I mean, it just affect the team bonding as well. I mean, if, you know, you're not included, if you're not inclusive in the conversations, even in the discussions or maybe over the coffee chats. Coffee which, you know, do during the office things. So I feel like these are very small things, but these become eventually big. I mean, we, it's like who say, I mean, no one notices it and people just don't notice it, but this eventually becomes big and it affects the overall culture of the workplace.

So I guess, like, it's the responsibility of the workplace as well to foster the inclusivity in, I mean, even in their core values since the beginning. So that's how, I mean, that's the only way this can really be not an issue. I mean, we don't have to, you know, think about, like, something like, women or men. I mean, it should be just...

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. It should be completely seamless. This actually reminds me of a really. It's kind of a funny/sad story that I heard this woman exec tell at one of my jobs. Like, this was several years ago. She was...she was working at whatever company, and...and they were having this big meeting, and it was, like, her and a bunch of dudes, and they took a break. And so during the break, the guys in the meeting decided to continue the conversation in the washroom, and she's like...

NANCY: Exactly.

ADRIANA: And because, like, they went into the washroom to continue the conversation, and she was a woman. She couldn't partake. Well, you know what she did? She walked into the washroom after them.

NANCY: That's ok. That's savage.

ADRIANA: That was, like, the greatest story. She's like, if you're having this conversation, I'm following you right into here. Okay, so.

NANCY: That's so savage.

ADRIANA: I know, right?

NANCY: Yeah. But, yeah.

ADRIANA: ...get her for doing that. Sorry.

NANCY: Yeah. I mean, yeah, yeah, you definitely get my point. And, yeah, I mean, it's good that we are talking about this, because I know, like, so many people just don't know about it. And, like, the savage thing, which you mentioned right now, it's. It's cool. I mean. Yeah, it's definitely cool. Yeah.

ADRIANA: Yeah. But I hope we don't have to keep doing stuff like that. You know? It's like, it was awesome. But also, like, oh, my God, she had to do that. And it was lucky that she, you know, she had the guts to go in, because it's not just anyone who's gonna be like, barge into the men's washroom. So, yeah, yeah. Honestly, like, one of the things that I love about doing my podcast is, like, I want to expose as many ladies in tech to my audience as possible because there's, like, far too many tech podcasts out there that, you know, highlight men. That's nice. There's, like, cool accomplishments, but, like, we ladies, we do some cool stuff. And so I'm...I really like, for me, it's so important to elevate the voices of, like, seriously badass women in tech.

NANCY: That's really great. I mean, that's a really cool thing, Adriana, and I really love that about your podcast.

ADRIANA: Oh, thank you. Yeah, I did, like, a little count the other day, and I think about half my guests so far have been women. Slightly more. Slightly more women. So I'm like, I'm super stoked about that.

NANCY: Yeah. And I did notice that, and that's really cool. I mean, because as you mentioned, like, there are so many podcasts and we just have...I mean, that was also one of the reason that, like, I wanted to have this podcast thing in Women in Cloud Native community as well, because I wanted to mention all those women who are leading open source initiatives in the Cloud Native and in every area. I mean, like, whether it's like, the product management, whether it's, like, community or it's like, tech, or it's like, leading any, any tag and etcetera. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

ADRIANA: Cool. Now, from, since starting Women in Cloud Native, what was the most kind of pleasant surprise that you've had from, from this whole experience so far?

NANCY: I mean...pleasant surprise?

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah. Thing that you didn't expect that you're like, oh, my God, this is amazing.

NANCY: Uh huh, uh huh. Okay, okay. Yeah. I think, like, one of the most amazing thing was, like, I never expected that this is going to be a place where even I got to, I get to know about opportunities and other people as well, because, like, other women did get to know about opportunities, whether it's about the conferences, whether it's about, like, attending those conferences, or whether it's about participating in different TAGs. I mean, that was really surprising to me because I felt like this information is spread out all over the social media and Internet still. It was surprising for me that somehow it was all over there, but somehow it just was in that discord group or slack group, and people got to know different things. That was really, I was really happy with that. That. Okay. It's being helpful for a lot of people. Yeah. And also, like, the surprising part. Yeah. With this, I also remember the coffee chats. I mean, those coffee chats had been very pretty helpful. I mean, a safe space where people discussed about negotiations.

I mean, like, how can they negotiate better in their companies or maybe moving to the next job role. I mean, things like that, those discussions which are generally, I mean, not being people are like, people prefer to do it in safe place sometimes. So even creating that safe space. So that was something like a pleasant surprise which happened, which I've observed. Yeah.

ADRIANA: Well, that's so cool. Yeah. And, you know, like, speaking of negotiations, that is, I think one of the hardest things for women to do, like, because, you know, like, you hear all these stories of, like, men getting, like, all these, like, extra perks when they, when they sign on for a new job, and women are like, okay. Yay. I love the salary you're giving me. And so to have a place where, like, you can talk to other women about how they accomplished, like, so that they got exactly what they got and to prove to other women that, yes, it's possible to negotiate and get your way.

NANCY: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Imposter syndrome. I think a lot of women have imposter syndrome. Even I fight that a lot of times. I mean, a lot of people in general have imposter syndrome, but I've seen that more because we don't have many examples, I think. So we really don't know what's happening. But I guess, like, we, if we talk to more women about their experience, we will definitely get to know that. How is it happening? But, yeah, like I did, the best thing would be that we never require this. I mean, the culture and the place is indifferent to everyone. Like, it's, it's just inclusive and. Yeah, that would be great.

ADRIANA: I totally agree. Yeah, I'm sorry, go ahead.

NANCY: No, I mean, I was just asking you that. Do you have example of, does this remind you of any example where you felt the most inclusive? And it could be anything. I mean, where you feel that environment was very inclusive.

ADRIANA: You know, my current team, I feel, is pretty inclusive. And it's because, like, we're a small team now where there's only three of us developer advocates at my company, and two of us are girls. And honestly, like, this is the highest ratio of, like, girls to guys on a team I've ever worked on before. And for me, that has made such a huge difference. Like, because I feel, I don't know, like, you know, you met Anna, my, she's my...my coworker/work wife. And, yeah, it's just, like, super nice to have, like, a fellow lady in tech who, you know, has...has gone through stuff, has been in the industry for a while, and we can...we can relate because I've also had, like, such very negative experiences with women before. Like, I have to admit that most of my women bosses have been terrible. My current boss is a woman and I love her. And I'm like, oh, my God, thank God I have a good woman boss because I, in the past, like, all of my women bosses have been awful and so disappointing and, like, just didn't end up supporting me. And I think that was even more disappointing than having a man boss not support me.

NANCY: Yeah, yeah, I know. I mean, this reminds me of one of my job, which I would not like to present, but, yeah, I mean, I had a similar incident, and I was like, I was shocked. I mean, I was, because I, like, this was like, the HR who did that to me and I was. There was this incident and I expected that I would get a fair support, but instead they prefer to support a lead because he was, like, critical asset at that moment. And I was a junior engineer and I felt awkward, awful, and I never expected that this could happen, but, yeah.

ADRIANA: But, yeah, yeah, I've had similar experiences. I complained to HR about some shady shit with the manager once, and they were extremely dismissive. And I left the call in tears thinking that I had done something wrong. How? How? Like, I did not feel supported at all. I ended up leaving the company because I'm like, I can't be in a place where I feel like this.

NANCY: Yeah, yeah, I did the same. And that's very sad. I hope this changes. I mean, it's, it's too sad.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I completely agree. But it, you know, like, the fact that, you know, like, you're Women in Cloud Native group, you have a safe space for people to, to talk about these things so important so that you can, I don't know, it gives you, like, a little boost of confidence, right? Whenever you're feeling down, you can, like, go and, like, share your story and, like, it's okay. Like, you know, it's not going to make the problem go away, but you can at least feel better and work towards, like, improving the situation by having these discussions.

NANCY: Yeah. I mean, even now, talking about this similar incident which we both had, I mean, I just, because, like, throughout these years, like, for two, three years, I felt that, okay, this is one off incident and I was living in that space, but then now I feel sad and I don't know, I just have this mixed feelings about this, that this is happening at so many places and it's kind of sad, but, yeah, it's good that we brought this up. And I guess, like, a lot of people will be hearing this and they know that this exists, so. Yeah, that's a good thing.

ADRIANA: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. We need to elevate these discussions and, you know, also as far as elevating, like, you know, diversity issues, I've got, I think by the time this airs, it will have already passed. But in next week, I'm going to be in this conference in Toronto called KubeHuddle, and we're doing a DEI panel where we get to share, like, you know, stories from, from the trenches, from a panel of ladies. And I think the thing that makes me super excited is that the conference organizer Marino, he put our panel as the keynote for the conference, which, like, it just, like, it warms my heart, because we have to bring attention to these matters because, you know, DEI has kind of become an afterthought in many organizations because. Oh, well, it's whatever. It's not important. Oh, these, like, complaining women, like: equality, equality, and it's like...no, because, like, it's still a thing. Because women aren't being treated fairly. They're getting undermined by whatever. I mean, I still get mansplained.

NANCY: Yeah, yeah, I agree. And I'm pretty sure that nobody knows about these things. I mean, it's not even out there.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah. It's, like, fallen out of fashion to talk about it.

NANCY: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, people. People must be unaware of it. Okay. These things even happen, I mean, because no one is talking about it. So it's really great. And I'm super excited for this panel. I hope to get. Get to see this on YouTube.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I think they're recording the sessions, the main sessions for KubeHuddle. So I think it will show up on YouTube, so...yeah. Yeah.

NANCY: Cool.

ADRIANA: Cool. And then final question before we. We shift gears, because correct me if I'm wrong, but when you started the Women in Cloud Native group, that was not officially, like, a CNCF group, and now, and I guess, as of, like, last year, was. Is that correct?

NANCY: Yeah, yeah, that's true. That's true. Yeah. I'm sorry, what was the question?

ADRIANA: How did that come about?

NANCY: Yeah, yeah, that's a...I mean, that's a very good question. I mean, I guess, like, we just started. I mean, we had no intention. I mean, I just wanted to start this Discord group where a lot of women can connect with each other. That's all. I mean, where we can discuss about different topics. It could be debugging, on-calls or maybe negotiations or anything like that. And we started this Discord group, but then I realized. I mean, we realized, and with the support of Katie, who is leading the Ambassador program, I mean, we realized that it would be really nice if we can be integrated with Cloud Native so that we can reach out to more women, because it's, like, one of the most active, Slack group. And I guess we got to reach, uh, to...because, like, I tried...we tried that it can happen through social media, but still, I feel like it was not reaching out, uh, to more women in different regions somehow. I mean, I cannot trust the algorithms when, uh, especially when Elon Musk has taken over Twitter.

I can just cannot. I just can't trust the algorithms that it's going to reach to people. But, yeah, I mean, being a part of, I mean, CNCF officially, I mean, over the community page, it really helped to reach out to a lot of people. So that was really helpful. And I also wanted to do this. I mean, I also wanted to pitch this that we have mentorship and mentee. Mentor and mentee program sort of thing, but I guess we already have a lot of LFX. Mentee mentor mentee program. I still need to discuss this, but, yeah, this is something which I feel we should have, and it could be really helpful. Yeah, but let's.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I love that so much because I have found in my life, like, I have not had too many women mentors in my life, and I think it would be so nice to have a place where that's easily accessible because I think also for mentorship programs, like, a lot of us tend to be really shy about asking somebody to be a mentor. And I know, like, it's just, you know, like, sometimes it's someone you look up to and you're like, oh, I'm so scared of, like, talking to them. And even though it's like, yeah, they're just...they're a human just like you and me. But it's still, like, overwhelming and scary and having a safe space again, where, like, these kinds of requests or these...these, like, bringing...bringing these people together, mentor and mentee becomes, like, less of a chore I think is so valuable to the community.

NANCY: I totally agree with what you mentioned. Sometimes you're like, you have this imposter syndrome, and you don't reach out to that people. I mean, that happened with me as well. It was. I was lucky that. That people. That person reached out to me instead. Oh, my God. Like, I was like, what? And I was...I never expected. I was having all these. I was like, I'm, in general overthinker. So...yeah, so I overthink a lot, and I was overthinking a lot, and then that person reached out to me and I was shook. I was shocked. I mean, okay, this is something which I wanted, and, okay, it finally happened, and that actually opened a lot of doors to opportunity. I mean, so I totally agree with you.

I mean, this sort of program can really help. I mean, because sometimes people are afraid to reach out and then they just don't know what they're missing. Like, the full room of opportunities or discussions or. Yeah, yeah, definitely in...in that. Maybe I'll work on this. Adriana, we can...I will also get in touch with you to maybe get it reviewed or maybe become a mentor. That would be so...

ADRIANA: I would love that.

NANCY: Yeah. Awesome.

ADRIANA: Yeah, definitely. Count me in. I would love to participate in that. Even if it doesn't become like a formalized program. We can make an informal thing, whatever we can do to help elevate the community. That's so great. That's so great. Now switching gears a bit, because there's the other thing that I wanted to discuss with you, which is so cool that you're doing. You are working in sustainability in tech, so why don't you talk a little bit about that?

NANCY: Yeah, so that's. This thing is related to, I mean, like when I. So basically when I studied, I mean, my bachelor's, I always wanted to do environmental engineering. And for some reason I didn't end up taking it because maybe I, maybe the courses or the universities were not that much accessible to me at that point. I mean, back then, and I didn't end up taking it, but then somewhere I always wanted to contribute in this. And then I came across TAG Environment Sustainability in Cloud Native. That pretty much aligns with whatever I'm doing and if I can make an impact there, that's really good. So we have this TAG Environment Sustainability in CNCF, which basically focuses on sustainability and tech.

This is something which started, I guess, like one year ago, I mean, like more than one year ago, but it's pretty new. And there are so many people out there who are doing great work. I mean, there are so many open source projects like Kepler and many more which are there to bring sustainability in tech. So, yeah, so this group, this initiative, this TAG has a lot of parts to it. I mean, there is, there is the green reviews. Comms is mostly related to the communication and advocating because obviously that's also important if we advocate about it and reaches out to people that something like this exists. I mean, we should be concerned about sustainability in tech. And then we have green reviews, which is being led by Nikki.

And this is more about, I mean, all the release cycles. Like whenever the project is going through the release cycles, the green reviews is responsible for reviewing the carbon footprint using various tools and just suggesting them, you know, suggestions, giving them suggestions that how can we reduce these carbon footprints? So that is something very cool. I still have to explore that area more in depth, but I want to talk about Cloud Native Sustainability Week, which happened for the first time last year in October. And a lot of countries participated in that. Like in the second week of October, there were like so many countries which participated in it, so many organizers who hosted the meetup around sustainability topic, and there were so many discussions around this topic. So that was a great initiative to have that all together. I mean, I led the India Chap...India thing. I mean, where we had in Bangalore mini conference sort of thing.

We had amazing topics by Red Hat and different people who have, I mean, who have their own startups in this area who are measuring all the sustainability footprints and suggesting different companies how to improve it. So, I mean, that was a good, good point, good start to basically get to know about the tech and get to know about things, how to basically convince your team to adopt it. So it was a great first start. And this year I'm going to, I'm leading this initiative for this year, the TAG Environment Sustainability, in which, like, again, I mean, different countries can come together, host the meetups and have different discussions around this topic. Yeah.

ADRIANA: That's so cool.

NANCY: Yeah.

ADRIANA: Wow. And so what do you think has been the most eye-opening thing about, you know, since you started working with this group?

NANCY: Yeah, so that's a very good question. I mean, I think, like, when I've started working on this, I just realized that, I mean, this is, on my personal level observation, not the TAG Environment Sustainability, but because I got involved into this. So once you get involved into some tech or something, you just keep thinking about it, right? It's like, and then I just observed in a lot of meetups and a lot of things. I just feel that so, I mean, many people care so less about this topic. I mean, this is very alarming because this is very sad because so many things are already happening. I mean, as we discussed initially, I mean, the weather changes, that's so evident. And even one state, I mean, Jakarta, I guess, like they are shifting their whole state to another place because it's going to submerge in ocean in few years.

So they're shifting their whole capital. I mean, it just feels sad that so many things are already happening. People are experiencing it. I mean, as you mentioned about Canada and I mentioned about Bangalore, I mean, this is sad that people are not taking this into account. And when I started discussing this with a lot of people who actually care about it, then I got to know that, I mean, if I still need to read a lot, and there is so much to read about it. I mean, all those, the tech which we do and the data centers and they are creating, I mean, they are emitting a lot of carbon footprints, which is a huge number. And it is, it will increase over the years. I mean, for sure.

I mean, there was this number, I'm forgetting the number, but I guess it is around 12%. Maybe I can, you know, give you the blog reference which you can paste because I don't want to split out some, you know, spit out random numbers, but it's a significant number which is going to increase. And we are responsible for that significant number as software developers because we are related to data centers, we are related to writing the code and using all the cloud, deploying our code to the cloud. So we are somehow responsible for this. I mean, we are a part of it, but no one is taking this into account. This pretty much sounds to me like security, to be honest. I mean, there was this one point when people didn't care about security, and then it started hitting their business and people's privacy, and now people are super, you know, caring about it. I'm just wondering when people are going to take this into account because this is also super critical.

ADRIANA: So. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's a really good point. And, you know, you hit it spot on when, you know, like, we work in an industry that by definition is not exactly environmentally friendly just for...because of the nature of what we do. And, like, it makes me feel incredibly guilty because, like, since I was a kid, I was, like, worried about the environment. You know, like, I, I had, like, environment clubs in my high school and stuff. Like, and, and yet I'm in an, in an industry that, you know, like, the sheer fact that we've got these servers that we're running or even if, like, you know, work working on my laptop plugged into the wall, I'm consuming energy, that sort of thing is, is contributing to, you know, to, like, it has an environmental impact. And so I think having, having a group like this to raise people's awareness so that it's, you know, people don't treat it as, like this stuff's gonna last forever. What I do now doesn't matter. It does matter. I mean, even, even on the last, you know, I think 15 years or so, I've seen just the climate has changed right before our eyes. And it's, it's like super, super freaky, you know, and it starts out as a subtle change at first, and then, and then you see, like, these sort of extreme other things and you're like, oh, my God, how did we let it get to this?

NANCY: Right, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, like, that's, that's something concerning. And that is the reason that I've started reading a lot of things around this. I mean, you know, how can we stop this? And basically, I mean, there are so many white papers out there. I mean, even on the TAG Environment Sustainability website, which maybe I can give you the link later. White papers, which, I mean, a lot of people are working on it.

I mean, in the TAG Environment itself, the white papers and the research papers. So I guess, I mean, at least the starting point could be that maybe we read about these facts and they figure out that how can we make a difference? And also there was this one very good point which was raised in one of the TAG meetings that which I really want that we do this year, that, I mean, one is like knowledge that this is happening. But the second part is how do you convince yourself team or how do you convince your management to follow this? Because this is not something, I mean, this is not something directly affecting their business. I mean, just like I mentioned about security when it started affecting the business and people's privacy, then people started caring about it. So, so basically, how do you convince your management about this topic? That's also crucial.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I completely agree. Now I wanted to just go back to one thing that you had mentioned earlier, which you had mentioned the Kepler project. Are you able to just provide a little bit more info on that?

NANCY: Yeah, so, okay, let me just see. I mean, so basically we have this Kepler project which is, I think which is also a part of Green Software Foundation. So this is something which basically provide insights to your Kubernetes cluster. I mean the carbon footprints of your Kubernetes cluster. So this is something which we can integrate and it's open source. This is something which we can integrate into our projects to have a look. So this is something around the Kepler project which is there. And we have like more projects around this which we can adopt in our pipeline or maybe for awareness we can at least attend the green review meetings. Or maybe we can just go through the website itself to get to know what all exist in this space. Yeah.

ADRIANA: Cool, cool. And you mentioned green review meetings. What exactly is a green review meeting?

NANCY: Yeah, so green reviews meeting. I mean, so in this, like, there are different release cycles in the CNCF project ecosystem itself. And we basically do the reviews, I mean, they do the reviews of how much carbon footprints they are producing and then you provide the suggestions that how can you basically decrease that. So this is, I think the whole, this is the whole aim of that green review meetings and yeah, I guess like these are kind of very useful because you get to know that what's happening and how can you mitigate it? Yeah, so. And also, like, if you want to...

ADRIANA: Oh, sorry, go ahead.

NANCY: I think there's an Internet lag.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

NANCY: I just wanted to mention that if you want to be a part of this meeting, I mean, we can. I mean, we can go to the website and we can just have this. I mean, it has the whole schedule, the calendar, links and whole schedule, and then we can just hop into that and listen to what's happening. Yeah.

ADRIANA: That's so awesome. And I was going to ask, so are green review meetings done for each one of the CNCF projects, then?

NANCY: That is something...to be honest, I'm not sure because I'm not deep. Like, I'm not much involved in the green review meeting as of now. This is something which I'm unaware of. But, yeah, I think I'll have to dig more into this. But, yeah, we can definitely ask this in the Slack group for sure.

ADRIANA: Cool. That's awesome. That's awesome. I love the idea of having these green review meetings and baking them into basically your SDLC, right? In much the same way that you said, like, security was an afterthought until it became a real problem. And now it's definitely more prevalent in the SDLC. Maybe not necessarily where it ought to be, but it's definitely, like, part of the conversation. And so having green review meetings puts, like, environmental concerns into the conversation so that. So that organizations can be more mindful than of like, their environmental impact, which is very. Yeah, that's awesome. Cool. Well, we are coming up on time, but before we wrap up, I was wondering if you have any, like, parting words or words of wisdom or hot takes for our audience.

NANCY: Yeah, so I think. I really love the podcast. So thank you so much, Adriana. I mean, for this podcast. Yeah, I think, like, there is one thing which I wanted to mention, like, through your podcast, I mean, because I'm leading this initiative for sustainability week. I mean, if you. I mean, to be honest, even I'm learning out the things, but my intention is to at least know about these issues and trying to figure out that, how to fix it. So even if you have the similar intention, maybe just feel free to host the meetup in your region and let us know. There is this open issue on GitHub, which maybe I can give you the link and you can paste. So, yeah, if you are interested to participate or maybe host the meetup. That would be really awesome. Yeah, that would be super awesome. So we are still yet to define the exact dates and month, but probably it's going to happen around October. So yeah, if you have interest. So please feel free to comment on the issue, which I will give.

ADRIANA: Yeah, awesome. Yeah. So we'll include that as part of the show notes. And the CNCF Slack group is called TAG...?

NANCY: Yeah, TAG Environment Sustainability.

ADRIANA: Yeah, TAG Environment Sustainability.

NANCY: Right.

ADRIANA: Yeah. And the women's group is called CNCF Women.

NANCY: Yes. Yes. Yeah, I'm going to present the link as well for that. I mean, we have this whole YouTube channels and also for the women, I mean, Women in Cloud Native. I mean, if you're interested to, I mean, I'm going to put out the form, Google form. And if you're interested to come to the podcast, share your journey, or maybe share, or maybe conduct a workshop around any technical topic you wish to do that you can let us know. So I'll share the Google form as well. Yeah.

ADRIANA: Amazing. This is so great. Well, thank you Nancy, so much for geeking out with me today. Y'all don't forget to subscribe and be sure to check out the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media. Until next time...

NANCY: Peace out and geek out.

ADRIANA: Geeking Out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Villela. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking Out is also produced by my daughter, Hannah Maxwell, who incidentally, designed all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the socials by going to bento.me/geekingout.

The One Where We Geek Out on Contributing to OpenTelemetry with Marylia Gutierrez

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Adriana Villela, Hannah Maxwell, Marylia Gutierrez) — Tue, 14 May 2024 04:00:00 +0000

About our guest:

Marylia is a Toronto-based Senior Staff Software Engineer at Grafana Labs, working with Open Telemetry. Before that, Marylia was a Engineer Manager and Developer at Cockroach Labs, working on Cluster Observability and a full-stack developer at IBM, working on internal Observability tools for DB2 products.

Find our guest on:

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show notes:

Additional notes:

Join CNCF Slack
Learn about the different ways you can contribute to OpenTelemetry here.

Transcript:

ADRIANA: Hey y'all, welcome to Geeking Out. The podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And geeking out with me today is Marylia Gutierrez of Grafana. Welcome, Marylia. And where are you calling from today?

MARYLIA: I'm also from Toronto.

ADRIANA: Yay, Toronto! Super excited! I always get so excited when there are other Canadians, other Torontonians, and we've got the bonus because you're also Brazilians.

MARYLIA: In Toronto, yeah.

ADRIANA: That's right, Brazilians in Toronto. Okay, so before we get started with the meaty bits, we are going to start with the lightning round questions. Are you ready?

MARYLIA: I'm ready.

ADRIANA: Okay, first question. Are you a lefty or a righty?

MARYLIA: Righty.

ADRIANA: Do you prefer iPhone or Android?

MARYLIA: Android all the way.

ADRIANA: Do you prefer Mac, Linux, or windows?

MARYLIA: Probably Mac is what I've been using for several years for development. It would be hard to move away from it.

ADRIANA: Yeah, fair enough. What is your favorite programming language?

MARYLIA: So I'm kind of in splits between...I really like JavaScript. I think I work a lot with this, but after working with Go I also really enjoy it. So it's good that I also like being like full stack. So everything backend I try to focus on Go, anything front end I use JavaScript, so it's a little split there.

ADRIANA: That's awesome. Best of both worlds. Okay, next question. Do you prefer Dev or Ops?

MARYLIA: Dev. Yeah.

ADRIANA: Right, cool. JSON or YAML?

MARYLIA: I think let's say JSON, just because I actually never work as much with YAML, so I, it's just not so common on my case. So it's the most familiar. Pretty much, yeah, yeah.

ADRIANA: And I guess because you, you also work with a lot of like JavaScript.

MARYLIA: Exactly, yeah, it's pretty much JSON, JSON, JSON. So.

ADRIANA: Okay, next question. Do you prefer spaces or tabs?

MARYLIA: Spaces. And you have like the tabs that actually convert to spaces kind of thing. So you don't...

ADRIANA: Yeah, I'm the same way. I'm the same way. Okay, two more questions. Do you prefer to consume content through video or text?

MARYLIA: Text, yes. Otherwise I get too distracted and, or I have to change the speed sometimes to go faster. Like where is that thing that I just wanted to remind myself there is no like way to just search on the video.

ADRIANA: I actually like, I caught myself last week listening to a podcast and I think I had to rewind it like five times because my mind started wandering while I was listening to it. And yeah, I agree. I wish there was like a search functionality in videos or podcasts or conversations in general where like, you know. I'll like, having...be having a conversation with someone, I'll zone out. I'm like, oh, shit, where's the rewind button?

MARYLIA: Or like, I talk with this, with that person. Who was the person? Or like, when do I talk about it? Come on after the brain.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I know, that drives me crazy. Okay, final question. What is your superpower?

MARYLIA: So I think for this one, gonna stick with context switching just because, oh, again, there's like backend and front end switching or just day to day tasks. I have to do this and I have to go to a meeting and then I can easily switch back and forth between things and pick up whatever is next.

ADRIANA: That is a good superpower. I definitely agree.

MARYLIA: That's like the time that I was like a manager previously I had like, sometimes the meeting would end early. I have a couple of minutes to the next one. I would like go in and program a little, do some coding and come back in just like those five minutes. So there's always something.

ADRIANA: That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah, I remember when I was a manager as well, like trying to, when I was doing some tech stuff on, on the side, I'm like, do I have time between, between meetings or like, please let people be late so I can like tinker on this a little bit more. Awesome. All right, you survived the lightning round questions. So I want to point out to our, to our audience that Marylia has actually...I have interviewed Marylia previously before on On-Call Me Maybe, and so I invited her to come on Geeking Out because it's always a treat chatting with Marylia. And last time, like when you were On-Call Me Maybe, we talked about how you were a manager at your previous job, but you still made it a point of staying technical. And so...which is...it's funny because the kind of management techie...management/IC switch has come up as a theme many times throughout this particular podcast.

So it's always interesting to see where people are at, where people land with their careers. And you just switched jobs, I guess relatively recently, right, where you were primarily in management, still staying technical, but now you're like, I guess fully IC?

MARYLIA: I see. So, yeah, the previous job was pretty much doing like the main position was a manager, but I was still doing a lot of development, still being like one of the top contributors, but now I move completely IC role, so. And I also have like small teams so we can divide things between us. So, yeah, completely IC now.

ADRIANA: That's awesome. And, and tell folks where, where you're working now.

MARYLIA: Working on Grafana. Focus on OpenTelemetry.

ADRIANA: Yay. Yeah, and that's, that was another reason why I wanted to have you on is because you are focusing on OpenTelemetry. And I believe and when you were at your previous job, you were managing an Observability team, right?

MARYLIA: So, yeah, so yeah, on the previous job I was working for Cockroach Labs and I was responsible for the Observability of the cluster. So already on this row of Observability and deciding what it was best for the user, like what information would be helpful for them to debug anything and also just know the current state of their databases, everything that they were running from, queries and things like that. So I really enjoy working on the Observability world. So definitely when made the switch, I wanted to continue on this Observability, and now I can focus. Now it's just pretty much on OpenTelemetry. So it can be, it's not just for databases now, for everything.

ADRIANA: So I guess you went from being like an end user of Observability to now like actually being a contributor in OpenTelemetry, which is awesome.

MARYLIA: Yeah, yeah. And it's good because I also have like the experience of, because I interacted a lot with what user would we're looking for and things like that. It's also helpful. For example, I, I'm joining the SIG for semantic conventions for databases now. We can actually give the opinion of like, oh, this type of information was always helpful. These were things that people were always asking and things like that. So whenever we made like a convention, I can give like the point of view of also what people were looking for.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, that's so great. And one thing that I want to ask you with regards to, like, you know, becoming a contributor in OpenTelemetry, like, how was that for you? How was your experience? I guess first part of my question is, had you ever contributed in open source before? Like in an open source community, like OpenTelemetry before?

MARYLIA: Yeah. So, well, CockroachDB is open source, so everything that we do there can, people can contribute. But it was hard for people to interact with the area that my team was on because it was not something so easy for people like to jump in and do stuff, especially because some of the testing stuff were things that it was easy for internal people to test, not as much the community. So even though it was in the open, was not as much of interaction at that point. So that was a first interact...having the group. And I have people from Lightstep, I have people from Dynatrace, Honeycomb. So I, that is, that was definitely a switch there that I've been really enjoying it.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

MARYLIA: Receptive because they want to improve the community and things like that, so it has been really great.

ADRIANA: That's awesome. And it's so nice to hear, like, you've had such a positive experience because I always tell people, like, whenever, you know, I'm trying to convince people to contribute to OpenTelemetry, I'm like, everyone's really nice. No one's going to bite your head off. Because it's scary, right? Making that first pull request, you're like, should I?

MARYLIA: Yeah. So I think it's also like, for example, different. If it is someone that never contributed, never done something is going to be a lot more scary. Like your first PR, your first interaction, and then, like, joining a meeting and like, oh, should I give my opinion? Of course, is always going to be scary.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

MARYLIA: But for me, because I had the experience of all the things that I was doing, was already in the open. So you have, like, when you create things, try always to be clear. Put a lot of description, like, on your PRs or like testing. And when you talking with somebody, what if you have a question, give the context and then ask the question. So, for example, I joined it...my first, like SIG, I asked a couple of questions, was kind of like, okay, my second one, I was making some comments on one of the plugins for Postgres, and I end up, they even asked me to be the code owner for that package. So on my second meeting, I became the code owner of something. So, but of course, it's not going to be the same for everybody because it's not like two weeks, you're going to be a code owner.

Actually, I was working for the past three years in databases, and that gave me the context to like, oh, we can make this thing better or change this or that, so it's gonna be different for each one. And then I would then they have, one of them actually offered to sponsor me to become a member, so I became a member, and then it's just on track for all the other things wherever they come.

ADRIANA: That's so cool. That's so cool. And, you know, one of the things that I so appreciate about, about this community is like, everybody actually makes a really concerted effort to make it vendor neutral. We're all like frenemies, competitors, but it's like, you don't even notice it. I never think about the fact that when I'm interacting with people in OTel, we're competitors.

MARYLIA: Yeah, it's very funny because internally sometimes you think about, oh, we have to do this. Wait, are the others doing this? Like, oh my God, no, I have to like, get this customer because that is the goal, right? Getting the customer as a company, you need to have revenue. But then I am...those videos...they're like, oh, we are doing this. I'm like, okay, cool, we can do this then. And it's so fun, like, to have these other points of views and things like that.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I totally agree. I totally agree. So was your first SIG that you joined, that was the, was it the semantic convention?

MARYLIA: No, it was the SDK Node. So my team is focused on SDKs, and we kind of like divide a little the languages between team, but we also switch a little just because I recently joined it. So now I'm focused on the node JS SDK with time. Probably gonna touch on all the others as well. So that is the one that I've been more actively joining. So that is the one that I became co-owner of the Postgres plugin inside the SDK.

ADRIANA: Oh, nice. That's awesome. So what are...for folks who might not be in the know on, like, what's kind of the day in the life, like working on the SDK, on the Node SDK, what does that mean?

MARYLIA: Yeah, so for example, I think one advantage that I have on my team is that the other members are working on, for example, the Java and .NET, and those are really stable SDKs. So I know the things that already exist there that are working. And then a lot of things are still experimental on the Node one. So we need to...or they just don't exist at all. So one kind of first step is to make alignment so I can create things like for example, we wanted to have information about the host ID and service instance ID, so we can use this even on Grafana dashboards. And then we were checking, and then each language were doing slightly different, or some of them were actually missing some cases. So my first thing was actually making sure that the host ID was always getting collected and then the server's instance ID was not being generated unless you force it. So again, I created like the default to have like a random ID.

So it stays like right now to make it consistent between then. The other thing that I'm working on right now is, for example, there are a lot of metrics we have, for example, semantic convention for the Java metrics. But that is the only language that has semantic convention. There is not for the others, but there are things that are very helpful specific for Node between, like, oh, just memory usage or like, specific like for the Node garbage collector, things like that. But there is nothing currently collecting any of those things. So that's why I'm working on, for example, working on creating like, the semantic conventions. Then if people agree, like, okay, these are the good ones that we should be collecting, then I can go back to the SDK and actually put up the PRs to make those things. And actually, just the other day, somebody opened, when starting collecting some of those metrics that you were missing, I was like, okay, cool.

So I can kind of like, already work with someone else that is also working on the same thing. And that is why the SIGs are important, because when I start working, I kind of ask like, oh, I'm start working on this. Just, is anyone else working on this? So we don't have any conflicts and they're like, oh, yeah, we have this information displays, but currently no one else is touching this. So I was like, okay, cool. So I'm going to create and share with all of you so you can give me feedback. So I think that is the cool part.

ADRIANA: That's so awesome. That's so awesome. Yeah. I've had some more recent SIG interactions outside of End User SIG are the OTel Operator SIG because I had a talk at KubeCon where we were talking about, like, aspects of the OTel Operator. So I, like, posted a bunch of questions on there. And one of the things that, that I notice as you start digging into things in OTel is like, oh, there's like, things missing, right? So you'll want to...I always see that as a...as an opportunity to, like, improve the docs, improve the README. So I remember like...

MARYLIA: Oh, I keep going on rabbit holes there because, for example, for this one, I was like, I just had to edit, like, the service instance ID. That's it. And my first thing was like, okay, which cloud detector already have this? And then I looked the README. There was no information at all on any of the READMEs about this. I was like, okay, let me first start then adding updating all the READMEs. So I opened like, a bunch of PRs to update all the docs. And then I noticed there was a PR, like, oh, some of those things were like, deprecated, we should update. So I started creating PR to update those things, and now I was like, okay, it's updated. And then I was like, but now we need to touch this other thing that also doesn't have any good example or documentation. Let me create this. So I think, like, on my first week, I open close to like 30 PRs.

ADRIANA: Oh, my God.

MARYLIA: And I was like, yeah. And my goal after I got all of those merges, like, okay, cool, now create the PR that I actually wanted and was like a small one kind of thing. But yeah, every time that I'm trying to use something and I say like, oh, I don't know how to use this, I tried to find out, I was like, oh, that is where the steps that I did. So I go there and update the documentation.

ADRIANA: So, yeah, yeah, it's such a rabbit hole with the documentation also because I think, like, some things live in the READMEs, some live in the OTel docs, and then, so it's like trying to achieve a balance because you don't want to necessarily duplicate information, but you want to make sure that one references the other, which in itself can be...can be complicated. Yeah. In my case, I remember I was asking a question for putting together this talk, and then someone pointed out, oh, yeah, it's not super well-documented. There's a ticket open to update this. And I'm like, it's still fresh in my mind, so I can totally update the README so that it clarifies things.

MARYLIA: Yeah, well, it was funny because I was following two tutorials. One thing that I was trying, but I was following one directly from OTel, and I was trying to put some things on a Grafana dashboard. And so I was following that document as well. But both ways were right ways of doing. But there was two steps that if you did, they would conflict with each other.

ADRIANA: Oh.

MARYLIA: And then I was like, it was not working. Like, why is not working? Then, like, I got some help from somebody from the community. I was like, oh, okay, so those two ways are right, but at some point, you, you need to check if you're doing one of the other was just like some Node options. And I was like, maybe I should put like this as a warning on the topic, like, make sure you don't have this other thing, like, set up. And I was talking with the person. I was like, okay, I'm gonna update them on both. Both Grafana doc and the OTel doc. They're like, wait, how can you update Grafana? I was like, no, no, I work for Grafana, so I can go there and update the website. So it's not something that...But, yeah. Then I was able to put the warning on both.

ADRIANA: That's so great. Yeah. I mean, and that's the thing, like, because especially if you're starting out with something, it's so scary. Like, you know, you're following the instructions. I don't know about you, but I'll be following the instructions on someone's blog post or whatever. I'm like, I must follow this example exactly because I don't want this thing to blow up in my face. And then something blows up in your face. You're like, oh, my God, what's this?

MARYLIA: And then you put, like, part of code of one and then the other and become that Frankenstein, and you're just like, okay, which part of this I actually need? And you start, like, commenting out until, like, it breaks or continue working. Like, okay, okay, this is the thing that I actually need here.

ADRIANA: Yeah, exactly. And then make sure you take good notes. Yeah. Because, like, I often find, like, if I don't touch something for a really long time, I might as well not have written it. You know?

MARYLIA: I have so many notes. I have, like, even for, like, notes about, like, topics. Even, like, if something, like, super basic, I was like, it's super basic for me right now. In a week, I might not think super basic. So I put, like, all the comments that I run for everything.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Because otherwise, like, future you is gonna be so mad at past yoiu. Yeah. I'm always surprised by how easily I forget things. Like, when I'm doing, I'm like, there's no way I'm gonna forget this. And then a week later, like... So I wanted to ask you as well, you know, what...how has it been? Because, as I mentioned before, you had been managing a team, and then I think just before you, you left Cockroach, you had gone back to, I think, primarily IC. How...how was that...how was that transition for you?

MARYLIA: I think my. I think, on my case is easier because I never stopped programming, so that was still, like, 50% of my time. I'm always developing, so just continue picking up on this. It was easy, I guess. Like, the challenge is more, like, when you change job, like, the things that I need to learn. And so the challenge was more on that side, not the programming itself. And now I think I'm still trying to get used to the amount of meetings I have because it's, like, barely any. So just, like, wait, what do I do now? I should be talking with people. Oh, no, not. And especially because a lot of my team is on Europe, so I. The meetings happen in the morning. So I have like one or two meetings a day in the morning, and then afternoon is completely, like, open.

ADRIANA: So that's so glorious.

MARYLIA: So it's good because one of my teammates, he's in the US and then he actually is my onboarding, like, buddy. So we kind of say, okay, we can schedule in the afternoon because we know that there's not going to be any conflicts with anything. So it's good because pretty much like ten in the morning, I have like the weeklies or like the company meeting, things like that. The SIGs that I joined are noon pretty much. So I have like those ones and then heads down working afternoon.

ADRIANA: That's awesome. I definitely appreciate having like an uninterrupted chunk of time to work. And for me too, like that, I think that was the biggest shock when, when I went from manager to IC, I'm like, I'm free.

MARYLIA: I'm just joking with the, you know, like all those like, or YouTube music or Spotify, like, how many minutes you heard? I was like, oh, it's gonna spike so much. I already see the spike.

ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. And how do you find, like, aside from, you know, having a lot of coworkers in Europe, so having to do the morning meetings, how do you generally find, like, having, working with folks in like that big of a time zone difference?

MARYLIA: Yeah, I think it's gonna again, like, depends on the team. So for example, my team is very senior, so that is also like an advantage that people have the experience on, know when to sync up on what teams you need to sync up. So, and even like, for example, we are working on the SDKs, so each one is actually doing for their own parts, so it's not like we would interact. But then when I want to find something like, oh, I found out, like in Java works this way so they can kind of like share. So we know that it's being done the same way everywhere. So we do have like the team channel that we can share this type of thing. And then when we, sometimes we have questions that we think we should discuss with the whole team, then we just keep putting on the agenda and then when the weekly comes, we discuss. But I do have one on ones with the rest of the team as well. Just like check in and stuff like that. So I think, yeah, it has been going really well. But again, the key is communication for everybody that anyone that is listening that doesn't have the experience, just message. People ask away. They might not be able to answer at that time, but when they have the time, they will definitely help you.

ADRIANA: And I think that's such good advice because I think especially for more junior people, they tend to get so scared to ask questions.

MARYLIA: I used to, like, manage a lot of junior people, and some of them would only message me. I was like, you can message the team. So I was always encouraged them when I would see them asking, like, on the, like, team channel and sometimes because the team channel note was private, but sometimes they would ask, like, on the open channels, I was like, oh, I'm so proud. I would be, like, so happy when I was seeing things like that. I was like, and then one time I asked, my manager was like, because I think one of them, they were afraid of, like, oh, I'm just, like, concerned that I'm gonna, like, sound stupid with my questions making things. I was like, how can I convince them that is not stupid? It's just nobody knows a lot of things. You just have to ask to learn. I was like, how can I convince that, like, people can ask questions? He's like, use you as an example.

I was like, wait, what do you mean? And he was like, well, because I just that morning had asked on the engineering channel that was like, the big one, and I was like, I have this problem and I have no idea what it is. Can somebody help me? That was kind of like, my question was at the previous job, like, have no idea what I'm doing kind of thing. So it was pretty much me on the message. And then who, replying me was one of the founders who created the thing, like, six years ago. I was like, oh, yeah. I was like, okay, cool. So you just replied that. See, if me as a manager or like, a senior IC is so open, like, hey, I have no idea. What is this thing? Who knows? We're not expecting anyone even, like, more junior to know those things as well.

ADRIANA: Yeah, exactly. And I think that's such an important thing to, to impart, like, throughout our industry because I think, and I notice especially in, like, large corporations, people are very afraid of asking questions because, you know, you're supposed to give off this impression that, yeah, know what you're doing. And I, you know, it's like, yeah, there, there are so many points in my day where I don't know what I'm doing. I will try to solve things on my own as much as possible because I kind of like that.

MARYLIA: Yeah.

ADRIANA: But, like, I'm stuck...

MARYLIA: It's like a balance. So I would say, for example, if you have, like, a task you read and you first, you have absolutely no idea what the task is talking about the first thing. Ask questions to clarify and like, okay, now at least I understand what they are asking me to do. Now try just for yourself to figure out on your own. So say like if in one, two days you don't make any progress, ask for help. I was like, this is like at least like some thresholds for like to try it out, see if you can learn it. Or at least if you like, completely stuck yourself, like can you give me like some pointer? Because at the same time I wouldn't like with people that I was even managed. And I will not just say the answer, hey, do this thing on the same because otherwise they won't learn. So you kind of like question, what do you think about this thing? What about that thing? Have you tried kind of thing? And you can see like the light come up at some point, like, oh yeah, I think we can do it this way.

So you try to like guide them. But yeah, yeah, but I myself like to try a little. And then when I'm stuck, I just, I was just messaging like somebody like this, my onboarding buddy. Like yesterday I was like, okay, I tried like four different things that are still not working. Do you have some time? And then I just go over, say like, I try this, this and this. And then he's like, oh, yeah, you just missed this thing. I was like, oh, okay.

ADRIANA: It's like, dammit, I wish I'd asked earlier.

MARYLIA: I spent like two days on this thing.

ADRIANA: And that's the thing too. I find when it comes to troubleshooting, like, I don't know about you, but like, for me personally, if I'm like stuck for a problem, stuck on a problem for two days and like, like, I need to have a sense of accomplishment. And when I'm stuck on a problem, there's no, no sense of accomplishment, I feel like my day is a failure. And then, you know, and then it's like, okay, I need to like reach out to people because like, I've tried everything like this, I have to. And then, you know, they, they explain the thing and then everything that you've been doing over the last two days, like, you're like, oh my God, it makes sense. It's like, oh, well, it wasn't a complete waste because look at all the things that I learned along the way.

MARYLIA: And if you don't fix it, you keep thinking of that thing, you go to bed thing. I have, I had like dreams about fixing the things. Sometimes I had a dream like, oh, this is the way. And I'm like, I need to wake up so I can actually fix it.

ADRIANA: Yeah. And that's, that's the other thing. Like I, like, for me personally, I hate letting go even though I know the best thing that I can do is walk away. And I keep making the same mistake over and over again. And sometimes I'm smart enough and walk away. And as you pointed out, like, you, you're working on the problem, you know, like it creeps into your dreams. It's because your brain is still, is still doing the problem solving anyway. So, like stepping away is going to help you so, so much.

Yeah. So, yeah, that, so that any, like, that's, that's the advice to anyone who is stuck troubleshooting away no matter how hard it is. And then, and then to your point of like, you know, don't give away the solution. So that people like, especially more junior people have like, it kind of trains their problem solving brain, right. Because they're used to being given the answer even though you can do it for them in 2 seconds, right? Which is so tempting. And then the other lesson that I learned as well, which I think you hinted at as well, which is like when you do go ask people for help, like show what you've tried.

MARYLIA: Yeah.

ADRIANA: Because, and I still remember, like, this was, I think, the best lesson that I learned in all of university. I don't remember anything that I learned in university, but I do remember one conversation with a professor that I had in statics and I remember coming to his office asking him a question about a problem set that I was working on, and he got mad at me. He's like, you didn't even try. Like, you will...next time you come into my office, you will tell me exactly what you did to attempt to solve this problem. And then we can have a conversation. I remember leaving his office and, like, he's so mean. Mean old man. And, but, like, it's the one lesson that had stayed with me for the longest time in my life because I always think back to him, like, you have to like, show the people that you're asking for help that you've at least attempted so that they know what you've tried, that they know that you're making an effort because otherwise, no one...no one likes someone who doesn't make an effort.

MARYLIA: Yeah, just give me the answer. I was like, okay. Yeah. It's the two things. One is like showing them that you try and the other is like explaining the con-. Because sometimes people don't know what you're working on. So if you say something like, oh, how to connect this thing like, wait, what thing? To what thing? And then sometimes, like, the same word means different thing for different people. Like, okay, you're talking about this system or that system. Like, so if you explain what you try, explain the context, explain what you're trying to do, then sometimes it is so much easier for the person helping you to just, okay, it's this thing or that thing.

ADRIANA: Yeah, exactly. I remember I once posted a question for the OTel Operator folks. I was trying to get, like, a demo working, and I was following, like, a thing in someone's blog post. So I'm like, okay, these are all the things that I tried. These are like, this is the version of, like, the operator that I use in the version of cert manager and blah, blah, blah. And then they're like, oh, what's, what's the version of this other component they use that I'm like, oh, it's this. And they're like, yeah, that's not gonna work. But they were super polite about it.

But, like, you know, being forthcoming and giving that information, and I. And I, you know, in a lot of ways, like, if you've ever worked in QA, I think it trains that part of your brain, right? Because you're used to filing bugs, so you can't file a bug that says it doesn't work. I remember my mom would call me, desperately trying to get her phone to work. It's not working. I'm like, what's not working? You have to give me more information.

MARYLIA: You're not helping me. Why? You can't. I'm trying.

ADRIANA: Yeah. Parent tech support.

MARYLIA: And even, like, different experience are going to, like, solve the same problem a different way. I remember one time that I had an escalation, and it was actually two escalations at the same time by the same customer, but coming from different teams. So I was in...each one was a completely different thing, and I was trying to find out if they were, like, related or not. It was like, a hell of an escalation. And then once I finished, like, okay, I think that was, like, a really interesting one. So I actually present it to my team, and I was like, I'm gonna go over with you with the information that I had at the time, and then all of you are gonna have to, because that was kind of, like, more a critical one. So I didn't have time to, like, stop and show to everybody, was kind of like, go, go, go kind of thing.

But after that, I was like, okay, now this is the information that I had, what all of you would have done here. So they would discuss and say, okay, I think we should do this or that. I was like, okay, this is what I did. Now with this information, what is your next step? So it was also a way of training them on what you would have done kind of thing?

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah. That's so great. That's so great. So you turn like, you know, a, a troubleshooting moment into a teachable moment for the rest of your team. That's amazing. I want to go back to the OTel work that you're doing. So I had a question around, right now you're a contributor to the Node SIG. Are there plans for you to become an approver or maintainer in that SIG?

MARYLIA: Yeah, think that is part of my goal. And even because I'm already like reviewing PRs and I even try to like put comments and approve, but I've been joking, like last week with them, I was like, I am approving, but it doesn't really count because someone else has to come and actually approve for real. But like at least I'm trying to help you because when I find things the person is already fixing. So one time that one of them come, at least it is helpful. I hope so. And then one of them actually commented like, oh yeah, please continue doing this because it helps when we get you to be an approver. That can be in a near future and I'm assuming maintainer is something that takes a longer time.

ADRIANA: I've got my fingers crossed for you. I know it's gonna happen. Yeah. Do you know what the process is for like moving into like an approver role?

MARYLIA: Like, so there is a few criteria. So for example, I think for approver has to be working on the area for at least a month. Had several meaningful contributions and things like that. So I think I'm just completing a month now.

ADRIANA: Oh, wow. Has it...it's only been a month? I guess a little more than a month, right?

MARYLIA: Yeah. It's because like I joined Grafana first week of March, but then we had like the onboarding like in person like the second week and then the third week working like some internal stuff. So when I actually started contributing to like OTel was about my 3rd, 4th week. So it would be like almost a month.

ADRIANA: Oh, wow. Wow, that's awesome. And so like hit the ground running. That's so great.

ADRIANA: That's so exciting. Yeah. So I mean, this shows to anyone who, you know, wants, wants to get on that path towards OTel approver. Like it's, it's doable.

MARYLIA: Pick your, your language, your area, not just SDK. Of course, there is a lot of other project there. And then usually they have the tag for good first issue or like, for grabs, or things like that. So look for those that are an easier entrance for you and then just started sending. And don't be afraid. Usually the first PR is going to have a lot of comments because people don't always read like the how to contribute or like the README. So the format is now is like the writing for the PR and things like that. So don't be afraid. Your first PR, imagine is going to be tons of comments. Then the second one a little less, the third one a little less, and then things will be easier with time.

ADRIANA: Yeah. And I think that's great advice and for people to know what to expect. And the other thing that I will mention is, like, everyone is so polite in their PRs. No one is a jerk so far, like, of all the various PRs that I've made on OTel, no one has been a jerk. Everyone has always very thoughtful comments. And I'm always impressed by, like, how people really take the time to, like, review your stuff properly, which I really appreciate because I'm like, honestly, I'm like, it might be like part of someone's job, but still, like, you know, to put the, to be thoughtful and put in the effort, I think, like, it makes me feel a lot more at ease and makes me feel welcome.

MARYLIA: Yeah. And it shows the value. People are valuing you as well, right? Because people want people contributing. So if you just mistreat people, you're not welcoming them to actually join it.

ADRIANA: So, yeah, so, yeah, I think that's why. Oh, sorry.

MARYLIA: I was gonna say I felt like, very lucky with the people that I interacted with. They were always pretty nice.

ADRIANA: That's so great. And I was gonna say, I think that's why OpenTelemetry, I think, has the highest project contribution in CNCF behind Kubernetes. Which makes me super excited. And, you know, just going back to a point that you made earlier on, like, the types of things to contribute, like, I think people who are contributing to open source for the first time can be so scared to contribute anything or to, like, join a SIG meeting and speak up. And it's so, you know, like, if you're...yeah, I find even if I know what I'm talking about, if I'm like, in a group of people that I don't necessarily know, it can be like, really hard to speak up. So I think even just joining the meetings and just getting used to the people around.

MARYLIA: Join, just listening in. Like the ones that I joined, a lot of people just actually quiet, just listening in. So start with this so you can have, like, a feel of what it is. It's gonna be like, case by case. Of course, like my second week, I was open a bunch of can of worm with my question. I was like, sorry, everybody, but I had to ask.

ADRIANA: Sorry not sorry.

MARYLIA: This is after like, almost 15 years working on the, on this world. So of course it comes with the experience, with time, knowing how to ask a questions again. Also, if I'm asking something, I'm always trying to be respectful, polite, explain the context of the things that I'm trying to do as well. And yeah.

ADRIANA: Yeah, and I think, I think that's the thing, right? You know, we, we talk about, like, people not being jerks when they answer questions, but you can't be a jerk when you ask because otherwise no one's gonna want to talk to you.

MARYLIA: So I created this PR my way. I'm not changing.

ADRIANA: Like, bye, don't want you. Yeah. And I think, you know, once people start interacting with you more and more and you're interacting with them, they, you know, you kind of come to this realization of like, oh, yeah, we're all humans here. We're just trying to do our best and make this project great. And I think that's what's really easy to forget sometimes is like, there are humans behind those avatars on GitHub.

MARYLIA: Yeah. And I think I also got really lucky with this job that Grafana was like, oh, no, your focus is to work on OpenTelemetry. So my day to day is to work on the community and help something that is going to help everybody, not just Grafana. So I think that was definitely something that drove me to come.

ADRIANA: Yeah, that's awesome. And I think it's so nice, too, because, like, you know, open source doesn't happen without, like, the people who put in the time. And I mean, if you're, like, doing open source on the side, like, that is a lot of work. And I know some people do that, but it's nice to be to work at a company where, like, they're committed to that open source project and other companies in the area, in the same industry are also committed to the open source project project. So that it's not like just one main, just one main organization as contributor. And I think, like, I think it speaks volumes more, more so than a company saying, like, we are contributors of open source to actually have dedicated teams that do open source, and I think. I think that speaks volumes. And, you know, like, I'm fortunate as well.

Like, I would say most of my work is spent in OpenTelemetry, and I'm very grateful for it. And as you were saying, you're. You're getting to spend most of your time in OpenTelemetry, and it's great because that's what helps make the community better.

MARYLIA: Yeah.

ADRIANA: Cool. Well, we are coming up on time, so before we wrap up, do you have any words of wisdom or hot takes that you want to share with people? It can be any about anything can be related to any of the topics we discussed today. Your choice.

MARYLIA: Guess I can do, like, a recap of some of the things. Just don't be afraid to ask questions, and don't be afraid to learn, because that is how you grow your career, your knowledge, grow experiences. You're gonna also meet a lot of different people, different cultures when you do that as well. And that is also something always great to just open your mind to see what is out there.

ADRIANA: Yeah. Yeah. And that's such an excellent point. Like, especially in, I think companies more and more are becoming, like, very, very global, but open source, you have no choice. It is extremely global, and it's very interesting when you get to, like, meet the different folks, the different cultures, and I think it makes us. I think it makes us better humans to be aware of and interact and, like, learn to respect these different cultures and points of view. So, yeah, that's amazing advice. Thank you so much.

Well, thank you, Marylia, for Geeking Out with me today. Y'all don't forget to subscribe and be sure to check out the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media. Until next time...

MARYLIA: Peace out and geek out.

ADRIANA: Geeking Out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Villela. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking Out is also produced by my daughter, Hannah Maxwell, who, incidentally, designed all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the socials by going to bento.me/geekingout.

The One Where We Geek Out at KubeHuddle on Mental Health

Wed, 8 May 2024 04:11:02 +0000

It's a very special episode of Geeking Out! We were live at KubeHuddle on May 7th in Toronto, Canada for a mental health panel featuring host Adriana Villela, joined by Tim Banks, Lian Li, Diana Pham, and Marino Wijay. We discuss three key topics: 1. What are some of your indications that you or your co-workers are suffering? 2. How can we prioritize & take care of our mental health, while advocating for others to do the same? 3. What changes in the industry and our environments would be beneficial to mental health going forward? We close off with some audience questions!

TRAILER: Geeking Out Live at KubeHuddle on May 7th

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Adriana Villela, Hannah Maxwell, Helen Shen) — Fri, 3 May 2024 16:22:19 +0000

Geeking Out will be doing a LIVE episode at the KubeHuddle Conference in Toronto, Canada, on May 7th at 16:25. We will be doing a very special mental health panel featuring Tim Banks, Marino Vijay, Diana Pham, and Lian Li. You can catch us either live in-person, or streaming on one of our socials: YouTube, X, or LinkedIn. For links to these, go to https://bento.me/geekingout.

The One Where We Geek Out on Asking Why with Helen Shen

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Adriana Villela, Hannah Maxwell, Helen Shen) — Tue, 30 Apr 2024 04:00:00 +0000

About our guest:

Helen Shen is a lifelong learner who believes in balancing strategic and tactical IT solutions to maximum value delivery and time to market without jeopardizing long term growth and scalability. She is a technology leader with finance domain knowledge in retail banking, capital markets, and wealth management. She's been responsible of major IT development initiatives over $1M, and has successfully modernized applications from monolithic architectures to API architecture, and has worked on migrating on-premise assets to the cloud.

Find our guest on:

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Transcript:

ADRIANA: Hey y'all, welcome to Geeking Out. The podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery. DevOps, Observability, reliability and everything in between. I'm your host Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And geeking out with me today I have Helen Shen. Welcome, Helen.

HELEN: Hi everyone. Hi everyone.

ADRIANA: Hey, it's so nice to have you on the show. Now, first things first, where are you calling from?

HELEN: I'm calling from a small town outside of Ottawa. It's called Carlton Place.

ADRIANA: Awesome. Yay. Another Canadian. Cool. Well, we're gonna get started with some lightning round questions before we get into the meaty bits. So are you ready? All right, let's do this. Okay, first question: are you left handed or right handed?

HELEN: Right handed.

ADRIANA: All right. iPhone or Android?

HELEN: iPhone.

ADRIANA: Mac, Linux or windows?

HELEN: Mac, Linux and windows.

ADRIANA: Ooh, all of them. Awesome. I love it. What's your favorite programming language?

HELEN: Java.

ADRIANA: Awesome. Dev or ops?

HELEN: DevOps.

ADRIANA: Awesome.

ADRIANA: I've had a few people who have

ADRIANA: answered DevOps as well, so I love it, I love it. No wrong answers either way. Okay. JSON or YAML?

HELEN: JSON.

ADRIANA: Ooh, I think, I think you might be one of the few on camp JSON so far. I should, I need to do a poll.

HELEN: At some point I started embracing YAML. Well, but that space got me.

ADRIANA: Oh yeah, yeah, I know. I've definitely gotten burned too many times by the, by the indentation on YAML.

HELEN: At the beginning stage, the learning of troubleshooting, whole night with my espresso and then figure out it's a space.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I know, right? Yeah. It's like why do you hate me so much? I feel ya. Okay, two more questions left. Do you prefer to consume content through video or text?

HELEN: Text.

ADRIANA: Alright. And finally, what is your superpower?

HELEN: My superpower is make everyone else to have superpower.

ADRIANA: Ooh, I like that. That's very meta. Amazing. Amazing. Well, thanks so much for doing the lightning round questions. Now it's time to get into the meaty bits. So I'm very excited for this conversation because, you know, we had our pre chat a couple weeks ago and I feel like the ideas just started flowing on this and so I'm very, I'm very stoked for our topic of discussion. So I think when we were chatting initially, one of the things that you brought up was the importance of asking why.

ADRIANA: So can you elaborate on that a little bit?

HELEN: Yes, yes. So I have been through career in different organizations doing different type of technology, different tech stacks, different solutions. And one thing I found that make me going through the success of the project, the deliverables, the customer satisfaction, everything is because of that question. Why? Why are we doing this? Because using DevOps as an example, why are we doing this? Not only because it's cool, even though it is cool. And not every organization may be ready for DevOps, but why? I remember at my junior stage that I took automation for granted. And when I got into projects that embrace agility and automation, I was pumped, I was motivated, I was ready to go. And I didn't understand at that time the word, "fit for purpose". I didn't quite get it.

I heard it, I acknowledged it, but I didn't...I can't say that I fully understood the context of it. Then through different experiences, different projects, and also different growth in myself, then I started to use that word and I can see the same reaction from my team members or more junior team members. Then I start to realize, okay, they have been through what I've been through and what I can offer is that, sharing that "why?" Why do we need fit for purpose? Why is there need for such process? Why is it so difficult? There is a reason why it's so difficult, and is there a reason that it had to be like this, or there is a chance for improvement? So even though we're talking about ways to enhance experience, customer experience, user experience, developer experience, we really truly have to understand why. What's our problem definition? What are we trying to solve? Then the journey will become much easier.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I totally agree. Now for our audience, can you define what you mean by, "fit for purpose"?

HELEN: Yes. So using a technology project as an example, I don't know if some of you might experience that you are participating in multiple projects, and one project is embracing agile, one project is embracing waterfall. And even though by the book in Agile you should be a consistent part, 100%, you might not get into that. You might have to participate multiple projects in different ways. Some are all manual, some are half automated, some are fully automated. And while you are especially for a single contributor in the project, sometimes it's very hard to switch that context and fit for purpose. Yeah, and what I mean by "fit for purpose" is to actually understand from the customer perspective, management perspective of what is your goal trying to solve and why it has to be this way. And sometimes the answer could be that this because the architecture, because the environment organization is very big and complex and to ensure the quality and audit requirement is the best. Waterfall approach...maybe? On the other hand, though, it could be we don't have the resource, the company didn't have that culture comfort level yet, right?

And even so, there are different reasons. And the fit or purpose is how the whole team, not just you or what's the best, what's the coolest is for the whole team plus the customers to make that whole decision or the outcome of our process, our decisions to go in which way and each project might be different. The reason is that you do need to hold different mindsets and different approach. However, understanding that why and the fit for process, sorry, fit for purpose mindset, then you actually make your context switching much easier. Because we do know we talk, we often see that context switching waste time. However, it's unavoidable by knowing that why it helps you switch that contacts and navigate much easier and efficiently. Actually, I'm not saying we should stop from improving ourselves, but I think what are we trying to improve? What's the best approach to improve? What's the best DevOps approach, etcetera. It really depends on the context of your project and then find that fit.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I couldn't agree more with that because I found in so many instances in my life, like as a developer, sometimes you're told to do things, right? And it's so easy to be in your little developer bubble, especially when you're a more junior person, where it's like, whatever, I do care, I just want to get my stuff done. And so, like, you know, we can be perfectly content with, with just doing what we're told. But I think it does us a disservice to not ask why. Because why is it that I'm doing the thing? Like, you know, I was chatting with my husband and he was talking about how he came up with like this big architecture for the stuff that he's working on. And he says it's so frustrating sometimes dealing with some of the folks that he works with because they don't understand the bigger picture of what they're trying to build. They're just working on this little piece. And so because they don't understand the full context, then it's harder to ask meaningful questions, right?

And also, if you don't understand why you're building something, I think it's a lot harder to like, you know, you just sort of accept the architecture for granted...like, you take it for granted and then that ends up becoming a problem because, what if, like, the original direction wasn't correct, right. But you don't understand it. You're not going to question it. When you understand it, you can think about it. Oh, yeah. Well, this doesn't make sense. Why are we doing it this way?

HELEN: You have a good point. However, I noticed that in my journey there are rarely, rarely. It might be like one off case, but rarely. People don't care about one. It's just that they may, they may be in their world focusing so much that they might forget. And I think, I think this is the leadership call that I would say that as a good leader, I think they should embrace this mindset by making this opportunity more visible and approachable to the team members. Because a lot of time, I think developer doesn't even realize that. And I think usually I would expect that especially leaders, definitely, even the senior managers ,would open that door to show, especially for developers when they're focusing, we respect their time, we respect their focus, we respect their expertise. However, this is the contribution you're making. This is the impact you're made most of the time. When that opportunity and the vision, the values are presented to them, it's a different story.

ADRIANA: Right. So are you saying then like it's kind of up to also like the, these folks in leadership positions to kind of incentivize to force to ask the why? And I think that's so, such a great habit to get into because we should always be questioning things like we need to be curious. Curiosity is what makes us learn.

HELEN: Right, exactly. And that's how we challenge the status quo in a productive way, in my opinion.

ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. And I think also, like it's, it's so important too, because like, sometimes, you know, when you're, when you work in a large organization and certain decisions are taken. Right. And it's, it's so easy to get mad, right? Like people, like, what are they doing? I hate them. But, you know, I think if we took the time to, to question it, to not just wonder why, but ask why of our leadership, I think it would be, I think it would be helpful as well because I think it can, I think it can calm any nerves, right. And I think part of it is we have to get into this habit though, of asking why of our leadership because I think sometimes in certain situations it can be very intimidating. Like you're in a town hall and, you know, there are always like brazen people who will ask questions at town halls, but then there's also like the tons of people who are just sitting there in the corner. Like, I have questions but I don't want to ask. And I think like, empowering folks to ask why and making it a safe place to ask why, I think is really important too, right?

HELEN: Yes, totally, totally. I remember that it took me quite a few years to feel comfortable asking questions in tech. So I can totally relate to that. But I do want to say that sometimes it could be an opportunity that we don't know why or even when it's not safe to ask why because of certain culture. It does feel a bit awkward. It's bad. But what I like to remind myself is everything's an opportunity.

ADRIANA: Yes.

HELEN: So as long as I'm here to contribute, I know this is the current climate and okay, people don't like to be asked why, but I do want to know because I have that thirst and that helps me to perform better, that helps my team to perform better, especially being in a management role. I think this is crucial. And sometimes you do run into a situation that's not so pretty. However, I take it as an opportunity that maybe they're not comfortable yet. And then there's so many opportunities and ways that we can navigate ourselves. And at the end of the day, I find this is not only the gain for the organization, it's also gained for self in terms of your career as well. Because then you grow professionally on how to solve these problems. And again, there's no right and wrong answer. Just like the lightning questions you asked at the beginning, but then you get more comfortable to it and that's your growth.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's all about being curious.

HELEN: Yes, yes, yes.

ADRIANA: Awesome. I absolutely love it. And you know, like, you know, you've mentioned that you currently work as a manager now. How do you find, having been an individual contributor in the past, having been wearing the developer, the developer hat, how is it wearing the developer hat versus wearing the manager hat? Was it a big clash for you? Was it natural progression for you?

HELEN: How was it? I miss being a developer, I'll be honest on that. However, I acknowledge my superpower that I mentioned is that because of my personality or the way that one thing I find is the compassion and empathy is a big thing. Because I understand my thought as a developer and understand my team members thoughts and if you truly care for them and actually enable them and, you know, emphasizing, why are we doing this? Why change management? Need to go through 20 layers of approval? But navigating that together as a team member makes me a better manager. And I realized that I can scale myself from a single contributor to enable more single contributors. I find that very, very satisfying. I feel good doing that. And one thing I really, really love asking my team is that sometimes as a single contributor, you really focus on, especially technology, difficult problems. And it's very natural, and I did the same to forget about the goal. Like the why, what problem are we trying to solve? What? Like, sometimes there's a balance approach.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

HELEN: You're trying to solve this problem and then it's way out of the budget, right? And it might take way out of the extra time, etcetera. So how do we find that balance point? And one approach, I really find it effective and it really makes my team member, especially developer, interested in thinking about this, is that I encourage them to say, when you got into this situation, don't think like a developer. Pretend that you're Helen. Pretend that you're a manager. What would you do? And I find that approach is really helping them and it helps me too, because understanding now why, and sometimes I don't understand why I'm looking for that. Why then I put myself in my manager's shoes, even the senior leadership, what's important to them.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

HELEN: The code, quality is important, but how do you write that if statement may be important to a tech lead, but not a CTO, and that's...it sounds as bad you saying it, but going through this process, you start to understand why the CTO doesn't focus on this. However, it's equally important to write a beautiful if statement without confusing your peers and then later on introduce a bug, right? So, yeah, it's all related. And just connecting that dot and always think yourself a level up and wear those hats. Pretend yourself to be your next, like, your manager or next level, and things could get a little bit clearer and easier.

ADRIANA: I really like that so much because I think it's so easy, you know, when we're, it's so easy for us as developers to, like, complain about management. Ah, these stupid management decisions. What were they thinking? And it's, you know, it's funny, the first time I was in a management position and I vowed like, oh, I'm never going to make the same, you know, stupid mistakes that were made with me by my crappy managers. Never, never, never.

And, you know, I, I'd like to think I was, like, relatively successful, but the thing you have to learn as a manager, which I'm sure you've, you've seen yourself, is you can't please everyone. You're going to make some decisions that are going to be unpopular. And I mean, so be it. Like, yeah, but I think as a manager, it's your duty to explain why. But, like, they don't have to love it. But I...but I also think that your team has to support it, because when your team doesn't support your decisions as a manager, then things plunge into chaos, right? Because then you find yourself in a position where, like, people are talking behind each other's backs and then you've got, like, little factions developing, and all it takes is, like, one bad seed to sort of, like, ruin the harmony of your team. So I definitely agree with you that it's so, so important to get people to, like, basically get into each other's shoes to have that understanding and to understand the why.

HELEN: Yes. And you raise a really good point, because it is, I agree, almost impossible to please everyone. At the same time, though, I believe it is possible to support everyone. That's different.

ADRIANA: Yes. Yeah, I completely agree.

HELEN: Yes. Yes. So as the leadership, in the leadership role, I actually believe that we...it's our responsibility to support every team member even though we may not able to please it because of the constraints we're in. And we can explain that background, usually explaining that reason, the why the thought process helps. And even though we may not be able to achieve the goal of 100% people agreeing, we can definitely support, because that's how we move forward as a team together.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I totally agree with you when you say that. I have a scenario that comes to mind in one of my more recent management roles where basically I pivoted the direction of my team. And on the most part, the team was super chill about it. They're like, gung ho. But I had this one person who was definitely not into, you know, the pivot, and he was extremely unhappy. And, you know, I tried my best to explain, like, the direction that we were going in, but it was, you know, it wasn't the type of work that he was doing. So the way in which I supported him wasn't necessarily like, I'm never going to be able to convince him that the work that we were doing was going to be the work that he wanted to do. So the best way I could support him was to help him...him find a role internally that would better match his skillset. And I think, you know, being able to...being able to support your team members doesn't always necessarily have to involve convincing them that you're right. It's just making sure that, you know, you're both in a good place that makes you happy.

HELEN: Right, right. And that's a...that's a...that's a very interesting point because I remember going to one on one with my team members, and the way I navigate this kind of situation is that I am hired by the organization as a manager to achieve certain goal for the company. And in order to make that happen, to make that goal successful, there are two parts. There's company and there's you. So both need to align.

ADRIANA: Yes.

HELEN: And if I cannot align your career goal with the company, that won't work out.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

HELEN: And it has to be both ways. And company need to align with you, you need to align with company, so both come together. If by any reason that alignment cannot be reached. And this is, this is my thing as a manager. I say the same to all my teams, no matter where I work. If you believe that alignment can be achieved by other place, and that's the best for you, and I'll support that. Even though that may be a loss for the company, it's a short term loss for our company, because then we don't waste time, unnecessary realignment and, you know, delaying certain things. I think we have to accept the fact that there is a middle ground, there is a balance, and technology is such a small world.

I don't believe in holding the team member stuck in one team. Makes sense, right? By supporting, by creating a supporting network, sometimes it could be internally within the team, sometimes it could be within the organization, sometimes it could be even beyond organization. So at different levels. And that's, that's what my firm value of belief is. Like, there's no point if both sides cannot align. It's important what company wants to achieve, but it's also important, the contributor, especially the bottom line contributor, that who actually doing the work.

Our job is to enable them. And if that have certain constraints, we try to eliminate as much as possible. And if that's not possible, then we support them at the next level. So that's, that's what I think it's important. And people often think that we want to make sure people don't quit. I do not want people to quit. I would love to work with them. However, we just have to be honest to ourselves. In my, in my modest opinion, that what's the best for the developers, the sole contributors, and what's the best for the company together.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I completely agree with you. Because if you're holding someone back like that, forcing them to be where they don't want to be, it's like, you know, you're, you're dating somebody who doesn't want to be with you and you're just forcing them to be with you because you love them and they don't love you back. And I mean, it does no one any good at the end of the day?

HELEN: Yeah, just gonna be...but doesn't mean you can't be friends, right.

ADRIANA: So, yeah, and I think, like, and tech is really cool because like, you know, especially in Toronto, like, and I mean, I know you're no longer in Toronto, but even like in Canada, eastern Canada, let's say, like, it's a small world, especially now that like, we've embraced more of this remote mentality, remote work mentality. It's a small world and I think like doing a solid for a co-worker, like, it goes a long way. People don't forget, like, I think there's like good karma in tech if, if you, yeah, you know, if you help, if you help somebody out, they will help you out at some point in the future. I fully believe in that.

HELEN: And I'm only their managers when I'm at work. Outside of work, I don't have to wear that hat. So I would rather be a good human being that I believe in myself. No matter where you are in the organization, whether you're a CEO, CTO, a developer, an intern, right? So at the end of the day, I'm only their manager for 8 hours.

ADRIANA: Yep. For sure. For sure, yep. Awesome. I love it. Switching gears a bit now, I know, like, you've gone back and forth between working both at a startup and a large enterprise. Yes. You know, some people only work startups, some people only work large enterprises. And you've gone back and forth between the two. Can you share with folks what that has been like and kind of what's, what do you think were the biggest shocks in both worlds?

HELEN: Hmm. I love learning, so switching gives me a total different views of things to do. The, I wouldn't say like, I know in advance that what I'm going to experience and what's the shock that it may have but actually feeling it is different. The risk appetite is very different depending on the size of the company. And when you're in a large organization where the process is very well developed, you take advantage of it. You basically embrace the safety. But at the same time, though, sometimes you could wonder why things move so slowly.

HELEN: Yes, and in a startup, whereas there is literally, the process is no process, you embrace it, you move on, you can go production the next day whenever you're ready. You still do all your best practice automation test integration. Then you just go, it feels awesome. However, there is a catch of the risk appetite. Sometimes it could be go beyond your threshold.

ADRIANA: Yep, yep.

HELEN: So that is the, that is the shocks that I would say, that caught me, even though I know about this, but feeling it is totally different. And you are the person in a senior leadership team being accountable.

ADRIANA: Yep.

HELEN: You have to support your team for that decision and then make that informed decision what risk to take and what risk not to take. And that is an amazing experience for me. And it does...it does push me a little bit, like, outside of my comfort zone. However, again, like, I think every experience has its own learning. There's, like my manager always says, don't chase for perfection, chase for progression. And I really take that to heart. And every situation, every mistake I make makes me a better person, make me a better, more professional, make me a better manager.

ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's so important to recognize because, you know, there are times in our careers where we think back to, like, our past mistakes and we're like, oh, so cringey. Oh, my God, I'm so embarrassed. I can't believe I did that. But, like, it helps shape who we are. Like, we wouldn't be where we are with our careers without that. So I really love that. I think that's, those are, like, really great words to live by.

I definitely agree with you on the, like, the shock of a startup because I remember I was, I think my second job out of school was, like, for a smaller organization. And I remember, like, we were developers touching prod. I mean, I had access to, like, you know, the prod data, and then I, I kind of decided, okay, I've had it with this sort of, like, you know, wild, wild west environment. So I wanted to go back to large enterprise because I needed more order. And of course, I went to, like, one of the most, like, one of the places with the most order, which was a bank, and with all of the regulations. And so my biggest shock was going from a place where, like, I, as a developer, had access to the prod database to going to an organization where there was, like, a separate team for, like, the QA and UAT databases and a separate team for the prod databases. And I'm like, what? And you have to, like, open tickets to be able to, like, communicate changes. And that was so jarring. I mean, you understand why, but it's still a complete, complete shock.

HELEN: Yes. Writing a delivery letter on every single deployment that we have to.

ADRIANA: Oh, my God. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The lovely document from hell. All the things that you have to do in order to deploy your code to prod and pray that you didn't mess up the instructions or else.

HELEN: Yes. However, this is a very interesting point, because when I work on DevOps pipelines right now, that's my delivery letter.

ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. But it's codified, which is beautiful.

HELEN: Exactly, exactly. And then by making that connection, I think it helps everybody on the team to be more, you know, compassionate about what's going on. Like, I remember I was cursing about delivery letter when there was still one, right? And especially when you have to redeploy that minor changes and you're afraid of every single typo that will slow you down.

ADRIANA: Oh my God.

HELEN: Yes, yes. As a developer, I did curse it. So I totally understand and can relate to it. But as a manager, by supporting it now, I would say I can understand the DevOps pipeline is with, that is basically codified, that delivery letter. However, you do understand that, why am I want to automate this for human error for whatever reason, make that connection and help, even help the company transition to that mindset, if you can make that connection. Otherwise, why? Why do I want to spend so much money doing this, right? And that's why I think, especially when I find something irritating or annoying, I try to embrace this mindset and then it will make sense. You will find a light a bit sooner.

ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's such a compelling argument. Like, whenever you've got folks who are like resisting this change to DevOps processes, right, all you need to do is say, well, do you remember the delivery letters that we had to do manually? This is why we have this process in place and I think it becomes a very compelling narrative. And yet another example why, explaining why asking why is so important.

HELEN: Yeah. And we run into a situation that sometimes, again, depending on the teams and the process, we need to have a DevOps engineer to click that button. Why? It's a continuous improvement process. Because even though I don't know if some of the technology team members can them relate, we have a pipeline, but I need a DevOps engineer to click that button. Like, oh, why? What if my DevOps engineer is not available, why do we need him to click that button? That button is just right there.

ADRIANA: Yeah, totally.

HELEN: Yeah. Sometimes it's an interim product like that, and, and it could related to the process approval, funding infrastructure constraint. And I understand. I was the person as a developer back then when I was being blocked by my DevOps engineer. But I understood because he's my great working partner. He has a life too. He needs a day off. He was busy. I totally understood. However, it's very easy to resent to the management. Like, why are you doing it this way? Right?

ADRIANA: Yeah, totally. Totally.

HELEN: Yes. And I like how my manager said, do things with empathy instead of a sword. So using that mindset, if you go to your manager and say that instead of blaming that button, that you can't click, frame it as a way that I want to understand, "why did you?" Why did the company or management decide to design things in this way? Maybe you'll get a different answer and maybe you'll understand what challenges they are facing and put yourself in their shoes, and then your suggestion might be very valuable to push them forward.

ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. And that's the important thing. Like, you know, understand why, but don't just take it at face value, because then...then you can use it to further probe and say, okay, well, I get that this is the process, but can we make it better? Because we need you to understand that this is not sustainable. This is a bottleneck for my work, and I think...

HELEN: Right.

ADRIANA: And so the empathy comes into play once again, which, you know, we need that. We need more of that in our industry.

HELEN: Yes, yes. And I love being in the management role to put that empathy, compassion into the daily work, because sometimes technology problem can really make us stay focused. But at the same time, though, you know, to put ourselves in a box and forget about that. So I like being in this role to remind my team members that everything goes a long way with your technical expertise with the empathy, right?

ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. Now, we are coming up on time, but before we wrap up, I do want to touch on one thing that I think is super important, that I think we need to talk about more, which is work life balance. And especially, like, you and I are both moms, and we are working moms in tech. So the question. My question to you is, you know, how...how do you manage as a working mom in tech? I mean, I know it's not like roses and ponies, like, all the time, you know, sunshine and rainbows. Like, we know that it's hard. So, like, what are your thoughts around that?

HELEN: It is hard. Bottom line, it is hard. But I look at it as a journey as well, and recognize that some days I can't do it, some days I could. And I think it's the expectation. Do you put your team member, as a manager, those unexpected expectations, writing codes with no bug? Probably not. Then why do we do that to ourselves?

ADRIANA: Yep, yep. Yeah. Oh, my God. That's so true. That's so true. I love that analogy so much. Yes.

HELEN: So it's natural for a mom like us wanted to do it all, and I can always stop at the same time. Though some days, I really sucked that I would say that I couldn't do this. Like, I can't deliver what I promised my team to...I fail my team sometimes. I was like, oh, I have to leave my kid watching tv for an hour. I can't do this. I'm not a good mom. It's very easy to get into that situation.

ADRIANA: Yeah, totally.

HELEN: But what...Yeah, but we really have to pull ourselves out from this situation. What I tried, the approach I use is, like, okay, if I have empathy for my team, do I have empathy for myself? Yeah. Like, do I give them unnecessary expectations, like, mission impossible, and it's not even achievable, then why do I do that to myself? And also knowing that you can't pour from an empty cup.

ADRIANA: Right.

HELEN: If I don't take care of myself, how do I take care of my team? How do I take care of my family? So that's the approach I use. I wouldn't say that I mastered this. And balance...if you...if you look at a balance beam, you're always, like, adjusting. So I haven't reached that balance. I'm still adjusting, but this is the approach I use.

ADRIANA: Yeah. Yeah. I love it. I love it. Yeah. And it's so true. I mean, balance isn't necessarily equilibrium. There are going to be wobbles, and that's okay. Yeah. And there are gonna be good days and bad days. I totally agree. I mean, I feel some days that I just. I suck. I can't do, like, any of the things properly. Like, you know, failing my daughter, sometimes failing at life, like, in general. And I totally agree with you.

Like, just making sure that you take care of yourself is so important. And, you know, I. I'm one to admit, like, I give advice on work life balance, and I am terrible at following my own advice. And I more recently, like, I have had to, like, take my own advice on work life balance because I found myself in a situation where I was burnt out so badly. Like, it was affecting my sleep, affecting, like, my eating, like, I was getting, like, anxiety and digestion. And so I had to, like, take a step back, and this was my body saying, you got to take care of yourself. So I had to, like, make, like, changes to. To my life to, like, achieve some balance. And we need to listen to our bodies.

HELEN: Yes, yes. And I know, Adriana, you actually climb.

ADRIANA: Yes.

HELEN: With your family. I think that's a...you don't like...I personally don't climb, but I do think it's a great opportunity to give it a try just because you realize that balance, like how a master elite athlete, how they climb, is still like this. Why are we so hard on ourselves? I find it that even though I can climb, but I...when I accompany, for example, my daughter for her climbing, then I feel like there's so much to learn. And I find...I find myself being more graceful acknowledging that. And I think that's one activity I would definitely encouraging people to give it a try. You don't be master. I can't even climb the easiest, but because I suck at it, it helped me understand that balance that, you know, reaching the balance is also a progression.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, totally, totally. And, you know, like, even if it's not your jam, like, you tried something that's outside of your comfort zone, and it doesn't have to be climbing. Whatever, right? That's the important thing. Just try something outside your comfort zone. Your brain will thank you because it's so different from what you do. So I think, yeah, I think that's amazing advice. Before we sign off, do you have any parting words of wisdom for our audience?

HELEN: I truly believe everyone has a purpose. I think just belief in yourself. Continuous questioning about why, find a purpose, and everybody will be their shining star.

ADRIANA: Awesome. I love that so much. Well, thank you so much, Helen, for geeking out with me today. Y'all don't forget to subscribe and be sure to check out the show notes for any additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media. Until next time...

HELEN: Peace out and geek out.

ADRIANA: Geeking Out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Villela. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking Out is also produced by my daughter, Hannah Maxwell, who, incidentally, designed all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the socials by going to bento.me/geekingout.

The One Where We Geek Out on Engineering Management with Alex Boten of Honeycomb

geekingout@dzerolabs.io (Adriana Villela, Hannah Maxwell, Alex Boten) — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 04:00:00 +0000

About our guest:

Alex Boten is a senior staff software engineer that has spent the last ten years helping organizations adapt to a cloud-native landscape by mashing keyboards. From building core network infrastructure to mobile client applications and everything in between, Alex has first-hand knowledge of how complex troubleshooting distributed applications is. This led him to the domain of observability and contributing as an approver and maintainer to OpenTelemetry.

Find our guest on:

All of Alex's socials on dot.cards/codeboten

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show Links:

Transcript:
ADRIANA: Hey, y'all, welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. Geeking out with me today is Alex Boten. Welcome, Alex.

ALEX: Hello. Thanks for having me.

ADRIANA: Super excited to have you on. Where are you calling from today?

ALEX: Just Vancouver, Canada, on the far west coast. So not too far away, but kind of far away.

ADRIANA: All right, well, before we get started with the meaty bits, I'm going to subject you to my lightning round questions.

ALEX: All right, let's do this.

ADRIANA: All right, first question. Are you a lefty or a righty?

ALEX: I am mostly a righty, although when I play sports, I'm a lefty.

ADRIANA: Cool. Okay, iPhone or Android?

ALEX: I tried Android for a very brief moment, and then when I tried to sync it with my iTunes library like 15 years ago, it didn't work. So I just switched to iPhone and never looked back. I'm kind of stuck in it.

ADRIANA: The iTunes library sync was the deal breaker.

ALEX: Absolutely.

ADRIANA: I feel ya. I, my mom had an Android for a while because my dad bought it for her even though he had an iPhone. And then she would ask me how to do stuff on, on her Android and I'm like, listen, if I'm not looking at your phone, I have no freaking clue what's going on because I don't have an Android.

ALEX: It just made no sense. I...I'm with you. I could never understand it.

ADRIANA: Yeah. Yeah. All right, next question. Mac, Linux or Windows?

ALEX: Mostly...mostly Mac these days. I have contemplated a few times going back to a Linux laptop, although every time I've tried it, I do a quick search on the laptops of choice, and the first hits that come back from the search engine are things like, hey, how do I get my broadcom WiFi card to work with my brand new laptop? And, you know, I did enough of this in the early two thousands that I don't, I don't feel I have the time to do that anymore.

ADRIANA: I feel you.

ALEX: Yeah, maybe I'll be on a Mac forever.

ADRIANA: Yeah, that's kind of my...my reasoning too, eventually for why I went Mac because I had like a Linux machine and like, nothing worked on it and I had a BlackBerry at the time and I couldn't even sync my BlackBerry, so I had to like either do a Windows VM or dual boot, and then I'm like, nah.

ALEX: Yep, I hear that.

ADRIANA: Yeah. Yeah, right, next question. Favorite programming language?

ALEX: Let's see. I feel like in general, I don't have a strong preference. I've enjoyed Go for the past, I don't know, five or six years. Before that. I really enjoyed Python for like five or six years. So kind of whatever works. I think in general.

ADRIANA: I'm down for that. Whatever makes you happy when you code too, right?

ALEX: Yeah, I mean, you know, I think there's, there's gotchas with every single language, so you use anything long enough, you'll find those gotchas, I feel. But maybe I just haven't found that perfect language yet.

ADRIANA: Yeah, fair enough. Okay, next question. JSON or YAML?

ALEX: Can I choose neither. Can I choose XML?

ADRIANA: Seriously?

ALEX: No.

ADRIANA: I don't know. I don't know.

ALEX: I think they're all just a means to an end. It's very rarely that any of those things are the thing that I really want to be spending my time on. So whatever the tools I'm using need, that's kind of what I'll...I'll go for it for that time.

ADRIANA: All right, do down for that. Spaces or tabs?

ALEX: I think I switch editors often enough that I prefer spaces in general because of various reasons. So I get spaces, but again, I'm not religious about it. If my, if my IDEs fill in tabs and I don't see it, I'm not going to pay attention to it. Although then when I switch to VIM and I see tabs, then I might be getting confused a little bit, so.

ADRIANA: Yeah, sure.

ALEX: I move for consistency one way or the other.

ADRIANA: It's funny, I've asked this question a few times now, and so far no one has been, like, super adamant one way or another, which makes me happy, is so I always think back to that Silicon Valley episode where it's like, so mad because his girlfriend is using whatever he's not using. Wars are being fought over this.

ALEX: I have been involved in those wars as, like, an innocent bystander, and really, it's. I just wanted at the end more than anything else.

ADRIANA: So, yeah, I don't think it's worth fighting over. I've kind of gone back and forth like, I was tabs for a while, and then I kind of embraced spaces and I don't know, I. Yeah, never looked back. I don't really. I don't care either way, as long as it's consistent one way or another, so. Okay, two more questions. Do you prefer to consume content through video or text?

ALEX: Oh, that's a tough one. I think. I think text mostly. I feel like whenever I go to video I just kind of turn my brain off. But when I...when I read, I tend to be more active, so I feel like. I feel like text in general.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fair, fair. Okay, final question. What is your superpower?

ALEX: Oh, I'm pretty good at coming up with nonsense stories. Like, off the top of my head when I'm trying to entertain people, usually little people that need entertaining. I feel like that might be my superpower. Maybe work related superpower would be things along the lines of just, like, learning. Learning everything I need. As I'm, like, debugging a problem, I feel like, you know, there's always...there's always going to be an answer to a question, and I'm...I think I'm pretty good at not giving up, I guess.

ADRIANA: Yes. And I feel like that is so important for our line of work because, I mean, the number of walls that we hit.

ALEX: The number of walls and the complexity and, you know, there's always going to be, like, a...a new thing that someone you don't know programmed in a language that nobody's ever heard of, and you kind of have to, like, be able to at least understand enough to get past whatever is getting in your way. So I feel like solving...solving problems that way is very helpful.

ADRIANA: Yeah, definitely. Having...having that persistence and then also knowing how to dig in, right?

ALEX: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And just, you know, not...not being intimidated by the problems, I guess. Yeah, because they can't be intimidating. Sometimes you...you run into a problem, you're like, I have no idea what is happening in this particular instance.

ADRIANA: Yes.

ALEX: And...and just, you know, kind of chipping away at it little by little, I think is really helpful. So...

ADRIANA: Yeah, I agree. Like, I do find sometimes when I...when I come upon a problem that looks impossible, like, the only way to stay sane is to, like, break it up into, like, something that you can solve and then just sort of start following the breadcrumbs towards the solution.

ALEX: Right. Being able to, like, take a step back and just identify what are the things that I know about this problem? Or, you know, how can I....how can I learn more about it without getting lost in the, like, oh, my God, I...I have no idea how to tackle this giant problem.

ADRIANA: Yeah. Yeah, totally.

ALEX: It's pretty important.

ADRIANA: I fully agree. Okay, well, now that we've got our questions out of the way. So it was funny when we were talking about what to talk about today, we could easily delve into OpenTelemetry because that is a chunk of the work that you do. However, we are going to not do that and instead talk about non OTel things.

ALEX: Yeah, let's do it. There is a time where I wasn't working on OTel, and I'm always excited to kind of dive into some of that stuff. So I think we, I think we talked about, like, discussing engineering management and career path and choices. So I'm happy to kind of start there if you'd like.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, let's do that. Let's do that. Because I think both you and I kind of share this, I don't know, trauma for being in engineering management. Is that...is that the right way to put it?

ALEX: I don't know about trauma. It definitely feels like it's a shared experience.

ADRIANA: Yes.

ALEX: Yeah, I feel like, I mean, for me, I went into engineering management after spending the better part of, like, ten years with an organization. And I feel like, in a lot of ways, our industry for a very long time, and I can see it shifting now. For a very long time, people were just taking engineering management as the next step, right? If you're around software long enough, the only evolution of your role as a software engineer is to eventually manage a team. And I'm happy to see that that's shifted a little bit. You see more people with roles like staff engineers, principal software engineers, you know, all that kind of role. That branch of the career path has evolved over time. But at least for me, at the time, when I, when I became an engineering manager, it just seemed like the next natural step in a career. And, you know, I'm curious if that's how you ended up where you ended up as an engineer manager as well.

ADRIANA: Yeah, to be honest, I think mine was like a little bit of FOMO, but a little bit of that, too, because it was like, it felt to me like I was surrounded by all these people who were, like, moving up. And I'll put that in air quotes. And it felt like, you know, where I was definitely taught early on in my career that, you know, you made manager, you've made it, and that we should aspire to manager and director and VP and all that stuff. So I'm like, yes, yes, that, that's it. And, you know, over the years, I've personally taken on, like, management roles and leadership-y roles where at first I'm like, yeah, I got it. I made it. I'm all excited, and it's fun. It's a different, it's a different kind of work. But then at the end of the day, I realized that wasn't the stuff that made me happy. I don't know how your experience was around that.

ALEX: Yeah. Just to make a comment on your previous statement, I don't know where you got FOMO about being an engineering manager. I feel like we should exchange notes on where you hang out to get that kind of FOMO. But I think for me, it was a similar vibe. I think I really enjoyed working in software. I really enjoyed writing software. I think that's always been something that I've been really excited to work on and kind of like you. You know, you see a lot of people in your peer group that move to engineering, management or director roles, and you start thinking, okay, well, maybe this is a thing for me as well.

And I think if you look at the industry, there's a lot of other people that have ended up in the same place where they moved up, as you pointed out astutely in air quotes, they moved up to engineering management, and they kind of got stuck there. And, you know, for me, I think earlier on, I definitely thought after I made that transition, like, there was no going back. I thought, okay, well, this is it. I'm an engineering manager. Like, this is my career path now, and I have to stay on it. And I think it wasn't until I read an article about...from Charity Majors about the, like, the career pendulum, where I started thinking, like, oh, maybe there is a path to going back to an IC role. And I think at the point at which I read this article, I was already feeling this sense of the things that my team were accomplishing and their achievements I thought were great for the team, but I was in a place where if the team was doing well, I was happy to share the credit or give the credit to the team. But if the team wasn't doing well, I felt like I was taking on all of the responsibility and the blame for the team not accomplishing its goals.

And I feel like that alone really threw some wrenches in my wheels a little bit. When I was an engineering manager, I think I just wasn't getting the same kind of positive reinforcement that the work that I was doing was impactful or it was in any way achieving the goals that I was hoping to achieve. And so I think, you know, at that point, I decided, well, maybe this isn't for me. And I feel like, you know, it's really important for people to understand that there is a way to move away from engineering manager and back to an IC role if this is something that you've tested and decided you didn't want.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I totally agree. And I think...I think that's that's what's really important is to know that it's not...it's not the be all, end all. It's also important to know that, like, some people are very suited for engineering management roles, and they love it. And, you know, we need people like that. We need all kinds of people.

ADRIANA: For me personally, you know, like, you're...you're asking, like, where did I get the FOMO from? So my first job out of school, I worked at Accenture. And the mentality there, I don't know how it is now, but certainly when I joined, it was, you started off as an analyst coding in the trenches. That that was, like, you were expected to, quote unquote, pay your dues by writing code, and then you were rewarded by being promoted to management. And so for me, that was like, okay, this is what needs to happen. And I think, you know, like, it's fine. It's a fine career path. But for me, it didn't...it really didn't make a lot of sense. And when I left, I was actually on track to being...If I had stayed, I would have gotten promoted to manager. But I felt at a place in my career where I'm like, I know nothing. How can I manage a technical team when I don't feel like I know enough? So I actually, like, I made a lateral move to another company so I could, like, improve my technical skills so that I could feel like, okay, if and when I become manager, I feel like I can, you know, manage my team effectively because I can call the bullshit on anything that's being, you know, that's...that's being thrown my way. So, yeah, that was...that was kind of my...my path to, uh, my...my topsy turvy path to management.

ALEX: So, yeah, I, um. Yeah, that's funny. I. I very much felt the same way where I felt like I needed to know the tech in order to be able to be an effective manager. And, you know, I...I think there's some merit to that. I also feel like there's...it's a bit of a double edged sword, right? Like, if...if you know the tech too well, you...you may never feel confidence in what your engineers are telling you...and, you know, there's that sense of, like, oh, well, you know, what? If I could just do it myself in...in less amount of time? How does that feel? How does that feel compared to, like, asking someone else to do the work? And I ended up managing a team that I was a lead on for a very long time. And so I think that was one of my challenge, was I always felt this need to jump back into the code and write code. And I know a lot of organizations, they talk about how managers should write code, and I feel like there's enough to do as a manager that you don't necessarily need to think about writing code. And I feel like that's...that's maybe a disservice to people that go from engineering to engineering management.

Is that responsibility that is put on those engineers now, engineering managers, to still think about writing code? Sure, you could still write code, but there's so many other things that you could be doing to unblock people that are working and reporting to you that you should probably change your mindset a little bit and focus on that.

ADRIANA: Yeah, that's a very interesting point of view. And I do wonder if, I think you end up with two flavors, though, of engineering managers as a result, because then you've got the pure people manager, engineering managers, and then you've got the ones who are kind of straddling both worlds, which I have to admit, I was one of those ones who was, like, trying to stay current in some form and just doing something technical, because for me, I didn't want to lose the skills. But also, I realized that when I go through large stretches of not coding, I actually get very depressed. So I wonder if that's more just a symptom of the, maybe engineering management isn't for me because I'd rather code. Or maybe I also know people who love doing both. They love the people management, but they also want to do the hands on stuff.

ALEX: Yeah. And I think I want to say that there's definitely different types of engineering managers, and I've seen amazing, and I've seen terrible managers in both cases that you listed, right? Like, I've seen people managers who were absolutely terrible at managing team, even though they might have had success in other environments. And I've also seen people who are people managers who do a tremendous job of, you know, working with their...with their engineers and still achieving, you know, what I would expect an engineering manager to achieve. And that, you know, they're able to, like, work well across their organization. They're able to, like, help career development with their engineers and all the other stuff. And I have also seen terrible, terrible, very technical engineering managers who, much like I was, knew too much about the code and kind of looked over your shoulder as you're making changes just to make sure that it's up to their standard. And you're like, well, okay, at some point, you have to start trusting the engineers on your team. So, yeah, I mean, I think, I, I don't think one category or the other is going to be like a shoe in for this will be a perfect manager. I think that's like a misconception from some organizations where they have these requirements, how technical someone should be or whatever.

ADRIANA: Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. But you bring up an important point which I think anyone going into management needs to do, which is like, you have to trust your team. You have to let go of that perfectionism. And, you know, they always say, like, delegate, delegate, delegate, and, but it's so hard, especially when you're coming up from being an individual contributor into a management position where you like to have that extra bit of control and I, and letting go of that control and trusting in your people to do the thing can be so hard, especially if you have some shitty people working for you that, that kind of, like, give you no reason to trust them. So that can be so hard.

ALEX: Yeah, it could definitely, definitely have, like, a negative impact. And maybe this is where the trauma comes from. You know, erode the trust that you have in people in general, and bad experiences are everywhere. So, you know, I think. I think you're right that you do have to trust them to a certain extent, you know, and things are not working out. Having those, like, frequent check ins with people and trying to, like, understand why things are not working the way that you would expect them, I think is really important.

ADRIANA: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You know, as a manager, I had, like, a day dedicated to my one on ones, and my last job, I managed two teams. It was like 13 people. So, like, my Thursday, a lot of one on ones. So, like, I would have to alternate. They were every other week where, like, one week was one team, the other week was the other team. So for me, it was like, every week, Thursday is full of one on ones. And as much as, like, most days, most Thursdays, I just wanted to run away screaming and not have the one on ones. I knew that that was like, that's the opportunity to connect with, with the people that, you know, you're managing. And if you miss one, you kind of miss those opportunities to, like, really help them out if they're struggling or, you know, doing stuff to help them do better, to sort of supercharge them, give them superpowers. But, yeah, it's, it's, it's like that necessary evil. I don't know how you felt about, about the one on ones.

ALEX: Yeah, I think I think one on ones were great. They're great in general. I do feel like, as a manager, learning how to use them effectively to, you know, because it's easy to have a one on one where you're just, you know, talking about whatever's happening in someone's life, and that's fine. I think it's a good way to connect, especially for organizations where people are remote. You know, you have to have those kind of connection points that just share a little bit of what's happening in people's day to day. But I also think it's important to go into a one on one with a plan, because it's easy otherwise to just have those discussions and not have a chance to maybe address something that is problematic or finding time to celebrate someone's wins or whatever. There's just things that people maybe don't leverage one on ones enough as managers.

I'm curious, what is, like, one thing you wish you knew as an engineer manager, like, when you started, what is, like, the one thing that you would expect, hope that everybody knows?

ADRIANA: Huh...that's a good question. I think the...I think...don't....don't underestimate the amount of time you have to put in with...um...like...really making sure that...like, I don't want to say keeping tabs on your team, because, like, that, that sounds micromanaging, and that was not my style. But, like, you really have to be...you have to be in the know of what's going on with...with your team in some form or another. Um, and I think that that's something that you kind of underestimate. I don't know, I kind of had these romantic views of, like, managers where it's like, oh, they just sit around doing nothing. But no, that's not true.

They have to keep tabs on all sorts of things, not only at the team level, but also at the, you know, to their direct manager to, like, to keep abreast of what's going on in the organization. And I think, oh, I know a good way to answer your question is I think a lot of people don't realize how much of a shit umbrella a manager tends to be, because I think, like, a good manager does have to protect their team to a certain extent, not to the point where, like, they know nothing, but, like, you know, I think there's got to be, like, some sort of shielding where you're not overstressing your team and keeping them away from, like, kind of the bullshit that's happening above. So...but they also have to be aware of the stuff that's happening so that they're also not naïve and you don't want them to be like, well, you know, upper management is a bunch of idiots and they have no idea what's going on. So you have to kind of, like, be very, very deliberate with your communications and effective in them so as to, like, attain that balance. I think that was probably, like, the hardest, hardest thing for me.

ALEX: Right. I think you definitely have to be a filter of some sort, because if you don't act as a filter between what's happening, you know, a level above or whatever, your team and your team, then there's that potential of always distracting your team with things that may never happen or things that may not be relevant at the time. And so, you know, I think part of what's allowing someone to be an effective manager is to allow people to focus on, you know, what is the most important deliverable at a particular point in time. And, you know, how do you...how do you do that if you just keep interrupting your team with all of the different questions that come to you as an engineering manager? And I feel like there's, you know, maybe...maybe this is where, like, the people that are technical have a bit of an advantage as a...as an um...because, you know, maybe they're being asked, hey, like, what does feature X look like if we wanted to implement it? Well, maybe, you know, if you're a technical manager, you...you might be able to answer this question a little bit.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

ALEX: Or you might have to, you know, pull someone in if you're..if you're not a technical manager.

ADRIANA: Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of navigating that fine line of, like, how...how much toil do you create for your own team? Because you also don't want to panic them. Like, I used to think, oh, you know, as a manager, I'll be, like, fully transparent on all the things, and then you quickly realize that, like, that is the most terrible idea ever because you are stressing people unnecessarily. Like, no, no, no, no.

ALEX: Right?

ADRIANA: Yeah. And especially, like you said, they're like, what are you gonna do? Stress people out about something that may or may not happen? Like, wait till it becomes a thing and then have those conversations, but until then, like, the best thing you can do is just sort of keep it under...under wraps until the thing actually materializes and then have those conversations.

ALEX: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's really important. As I took on engineering management the same way you did where I thought, okay, well, my team are all, you know, people that I used to work with. Whatever, whatever gets sent my way, I'm just going to let them be aware of it because, you know, they're all, they're all very intelligent people. I, you know, they're going to be able to handle it. And, like, at some point, it just became way too much, too many distractions happening all at once. And, you know, that was a very challenging learning experience for sure, because, you know, once you...once you said these things out there, like, you can't really just, like, say, all right, forget like, the last, like, ten minutes of interactions. Just don't worry about all those things that you're worrying about now.

ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. So how about you? What was, like, the most eye-opening manager thing for you?

ALEX: Oh, I wrote a whole, like, post on my journey back to an individual contributor at some point after I left management. I think most of my learnings are in there, but I think identifying what brings you joy as, as a manager and, like, really leaning into how you, how you can feel like you're getting value out of your, you know, your day to day is really, really important. And for me, I never, I never quite got to the place where the thing that I could have gotten joy out of as an, as a manager gave me enough joy to, like, keep me going in that role forever. I think, like, you know, I like you. I always find that it's way more fun to solve problems on a... on a coding basis rather than solving the people problem that you have to do deal with as a manager. And, yeah, I think that was probably the biggest...the biggest learning is just like, maybe before or, like, as you start becoming a manager, trying to identify what are the things that, you know, make me feel good about my...my...what I...how effective I am in my role and how can, how can I keep track of those things for myself so that I can get that kind of positive reinforcement or, like, feedback cycle.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

ALEX: The best advice I ever got, though, I think, was someone said to me that. So, so, you know, I was going from, like, a technical lead on my team to, like, managing the team. And the best advice I got was to lean into my new peer group. And, you know, I think that's something that a lot of managers who end up managing the team that they were part of struggle with and, you know, because you would go out and, you know, hang out with the people that you work with. And when you become their manager, it's really important to kind of build a little bit of a distinction there because, you know, it...it's important to, I feel like if you don't build that kind of distinction between your, what was your peer group and your current peer group, which would be the other managers, then it's really impossible to do that. First, the previous thing that you were talking about, which was to kind of filter things out because, you know, and it's not trying to be deceptive or anything, but if you're going out and hanging out with the people that you were working with as individual contributors, you know, you will probably lean on them to, you know, talk about the challenges that you're having at work.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

ALEX: And that's not, that's not necessarily a good thing for...for someone who's reporting to you to hear, you know, the things that you're struggling with as a manager. I'm not trying, you know, I wouldn't say that you have to be deceptive, but with the struggles that you have, it's a lot more helpful to lean into that new peer group, which would be the other managers and that kind of stuff, I feel like that's, that was the best advice I got. Unfortunately, I didn't follow it. So that was, that was another one of my struggles.

ADRIANA: It's hard advice to follow because, like, especially when you're going from, like, you know, either, like, even going from team lead to manager, like, it's, it's a definite, like, it's a change. And so when you're, when you're used to being buddies with, with your coworkers and then all of a sudden you're managing them, it's like, it's such a hard switch to flick in your mind because, you know, it's like, why can't we be friends? But also, like, as you said, if you, if you share your struggles with, with the folks that you're managing, in some ways it can kind of demoralize them because, you know, like, you're their leader. And now it's almost, I don't want to say it shows weakness, but it definitely, like, you look different in their eyes. How can they, how can they see you as, like, you know, the, how can they see you properly as a manager if...if you're showing, like, this...this side of you that you really shouldn't be exposing as a manager? It's kind of, it's a balancing act.

ALEX: Right? It said this, that, you know, fine line between, like, a professional life and a personal life. And, like, when you're...when you're sharing some of your personal life with. With people that you work with, it does become a challenge to, you know, if, say, something happens with, you know, one of..,the...one of the people on your team that was reporting to you and you're friends with them, you know, turning around and saying, okay, now we have to have a serious conversation about your performance at work. Like that. That's a really tough thing to do for people, both for the recipient of the...of the feedback and the person who has to give the feedback. You know, you don't really want to be that person who has to, like, put someone on, like, a performance improvement plan that you, you know, hang out with all the time like that. I feel like that's...hat's. That's almost a...yeah, it's really tough to balance that kind of line between the two.

ADRIANA: Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree. I think, for me, that was definitely one of the hardest things where I came into management, thinking, let's all be friends, and it's like, yeah, it doesn't quite work out that way because sometimes you got to crack the whip and you kind of got to be a little bit, you know, mean. I don't want to say mean, but, like, you got to be stern because otherwise, like, sometimes, like, when you're too chummy, people kind of take advantage of your goodwill, right? Like, oh, we're friends. It's fine. I can get away with whatever.

ALEX: Yeah. Yeah. I think there's definitely something to be said about. About keeping that relationship professional and yeah, I don't know. It's just a really hard thing to do for someone who. Who you were, like, friends with and then having to go to managing them. I feel like, as a first time manager, if you're being put in a position where you have to manage a team of people that you were friends with, I would definitely request that not to be the case for anybody out there thinking about getting into management. I think organizations would do really well of giving, like, first time managers the opportunity to learn the management bits without having any kind of, like, prior relationship.

ADRIANA: Yeah.

ALEX: Kind of boundaries to deal with in their past. So that's actually one of the things that was in, I think, "An Elegant Puzzle", I think, is the name of the book, and, you know, it's a. It's a great book about how to become an engineering manager and what challenges to look for and what red flags to look for. And, you know, one of the things that you. That suggested in that book, if memory serves. I could have been reading something else, but I think that's, that was one, is to, you know, have, like, a small team. I think it's like four to six people, and ideally, these are people that you haven't, you know, they're not your previous team, and you're not trying to manage your previous kind of peers. Yeah, that's a great book. Also, for anybody who, who's looking into this, I think Will Larson maybe is the author, I can't remember.

ADRIANA: I'll definitely include in the show notes.

ALEX: Excellent.

ADRIANA: Yeah, that's...that's definitely really good advice. What about, you know, the going beyond manager has for you personally, has, like, going beyond manager to, like, director or VP? Has that ever been, like, at any point, like, especially when you were a manager? Did that ever tickle your fancy?

ALEX: I have never had director FOMO. Just gonna throw this out there. I've never had FOMO around becoming a director. I think once I became a manager, I kind of...I think I just learned enough about the things that you would have to do to be a director and an effective director, and I just...it never really lined up with things that I was interested in. Yeah. What about you?

ADRIANA: Yeah, I have to agree. I...for...for a while...fo I have to admit that I did have director FOMO, but it was, like, for all the wrong reasons. And it was basically like, where am I in relation to my peers at my career right now? All of my peers from university are, like, you know, directors or vps or whatever. And so for a long time, I used to be, like, really down to myself thinking, well, I'm not manager. I'm not a director. I'm a loser. Like, obviously I'm not successful. And for me, the most liberating thing was getting out of that mindset and realizing that success is what makes you happy in your career and finding a little niche that you can call your own and thriving in that and making a difference in that little corner. And I think as soon as I realized that, and then as soon as....in my last management role, as soon as I realized what was involved in being a director, I was like, um...no. Thank you, but no.

ALEX: Yeah, I echo that 100%. I feel like...like, for me, director just meant that you were in meetings all day long and didn't find time to do anything else. And I feel like that, that alone is, like, is enough of a requirement for me not to be in, you know, overly interested in the role yeah, but, yeah, I agree on...on the potential for FOMO, because you do, you know, we do compare ourselves to our peers and, you know, depending on which peer group, maybe people that you were into university or whatever, too, but...and it is tempting once you see this, you're like, oh, well, what if I became this...this role? And then, you know, I think...I think that's actually why a lot of people end up in those roles, you know, because some folks just...either they get stuck in an engineering manager role and they don't feel like there is a way back out of that role, or they see a lot of people that follow that pattern. They're like, oh, well, this is what I should be doing as well. And I think it's very unfortunate. I feel like, I like when I find directors and engineering managers that love what they're doing, and I think that they're really fun to work with. And the people that aren't into it, you can always kind of tell, like, it's that, you know, they struggle through some of those roles, and it's...yeah, it's just unfortunate if. If you got there, because it's not the thing that you wanted, but it's the thing that you thought you needed. Yeah, it's...

ADRIANA: And I'd say it's like, it's. It's never too late to reevaluate. Like, I actually interviewed someone for this podcast who was in a director role, and he decided, and he'd gotten into management very, very early in his career, and he decided after being a director for a bit, he was like, oh, I kind of just want to be an IC now, which is super cool. And I...and there's nothing wrong with, like, changing your mind and then changing your mind again, because maybe, like, you just needed a little mental break from being a manager or being an IC or whatever. I think that's totally cool, too. And I think. I think that's another really important lesson that I wish I had known earlier on in my career, is that not everything is final. Like, you're almost, like, led to believe at an early age that, like, the career you choose is, like, it for you.

ALEX: Right? I just think of those, like, high school...high school questionnaires. What will you be when you grow up?

ADRIANA: Right? Yeah. Like, I definitely didn't imagine this, but that's cool. I'm rolling with it and. Yeah. Like, change your mind. It's okay. Change your mind many times. It's totally fine as long as you're happy doing what you're doing.

ALEX: Yeah, yeah. And I feel like, I feel like you're right. You know, some people, maybe they were a manager somewhere and things were not exactly where they expected, and then they go back to an IC role and then maybe they try management again, you know, for like six months or something. You know, this is, this is actually what I did. I was an EM for like two years, then I was an IC for like three years, and then I was a manager for six months. So, you know, it's important to try things out and see if the circumstances change the role enough that, you know, you may find happiness in a different director role or whatever. Like, there's nothing wrong with trying it out, but I feel like one of the important things for, for people to understand is that people that move away from engineering management back to an IC role. And for me, my experience has been that I've been a much more effective individual contributor after being a manager.

Like, after understanding what happens kind of beyond that management role and seeing how organizations function at different levels, I think is really helpful for IC role because it's an opportunity to really understand how your work impacts the rest of your organization, how you can maybe impact your manager so that they can be free to do better work or whatever it is. Like, there's just like a lot of learnings that happen at that stage, and I think that's, that's super valuable, even if it doesn't end up being the role for you.

ADRIANA: Yeah, I agree. It gives you a lot of empathy, right? Because it's so easy for us to be judgy. I remember, like, my first manager out of school, I was like, ah, this guy's an idiot. He doesn't know what he's doing. I was like, no dude is going through all this stuff behind the scenes that you don't even know about. Stop being so damn naïve.

ALEX: Right. Not...not really understanding what's happening behind that manager meeting door is. Yeah, I mean, and, and how would you know this, right? Like we talked about earlier, like, if you have a good manager that filters out the nonsense that you don't have to worry about, you know, great. That means that your team will never need to know about the things that they don't need to know about. And, you know, since they're not taking out for beers, they're not going to vent to you and tell you about how their day went, so.

ADRIANA: Yeah, totally agree. Final thing, I was curious. This happened to me a couple of times. I remember both times when I went from manager to IC and I was applying for the IC roles. I remember interviewing and the interviewer is like, you know this is an IC role, right? I'm like, yeah, I don't know if you ever encountered that yourself when you were switching back to IC.

ALEX: No, I wrote a whole blog post about it, and anyone who's ever asked me about if I want to be manager again, I just send them to this blog post and I tell them, here's the thing, so you have to understand as to why I don't want to be a manager at this point.

ADRIANA: Awesome. I will be sure to link to your blog post in the show notes before we part ways. Do you have any final words of wisdom or hot takes that you would like to share with our audience?

ALEX: I have no hot takes, unfortunately. But yeah, I don't know. I guess on the topic of career paths and engineering management, if you think it's for you, you should try it out and find a group that will support you in doing it. And if it doesn't work out, know that there's a way out.

ADRIANA: Yes, there's always the off ramp.

ALEX: Yep.

ADRIANA: It's very comforting. Very comforting to know that.

ALEX: Right. There is a future beyond it. If it doesn't work out for you, it's not the. It's not. You will not be trapped there forever. Or at least hopefully you will not be trapped there forever. I don't know.

ADRIANA: Yes. Hopefully not. Fingers crossed. Awesome. Well, thanks, Alex, so much for geeking out with me today. Y'all don't forget to subscribe and be sure to check the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and and our guests on social media. Until next time...

ALEX: Peace out and geek out.

ADRIANA: Geeking Out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Villela. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking Out is also produced by my daughter, Hannah Maxwell, who incidentally, designed all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the socials by going to bento.me/geekingout.