Motivated to Learn with Adriana Villela

After 25 years in tech it’s hard not to coast. Adriana has come from writing word docs for the ops team to deploy software, through Devops, and now has a focus on OTel and Kubernetes. How do we get more people from 100 to 400 levels and why is there no content in between? And why we need junior engineers to make our senior engineers better.

Links

• Bluefin wallpapers https://github.com/ublue-os/packages/tree/main/packages/bluefin/wallpapers
• Justin’s talk with balloons and a spreadsheet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0mWGaBawR8
• Adriana on Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/adrianamvillela.bsky.social

Creators and Guests

Host

Autumn Nash

Host

Justin Garrison

What is Fork Around And Find Out?

Fork Around and Find Out is your downtime from uptime. Your break from the pager, and a chance to learn from expert’s successes and failures. We cover state-of-the-art, legacy practices for building, running, and maintaining software and systems.

Justin: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Fork Around and find out the only podcast where you can observe your ability to DevOps. I'm your host Justin Garrison, and with me as always, it's TN Nash. And today on the show we have Adriana VV Vila. Man, I, I'm gonna butch. I did it right. Okay, good. I love your idea. Thank you for the, you're good.

You're good. Good. I'm sorry, I wanted to use the Spanish. I'm in Southern California, so as soon, soon as I see vls, I, it throws everyone off. I get VLA all the time. That's it's fine. Ella. Ella, cool. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Uh, you are, well, tell us about yourself a little bit. Tell us what you do and, and what you focus on.

Okay, so current role. I'm a principal developer advocate at Dynatrace. So I am, uh, fully into the observability space. Uh, I'm assuming not tracing dinosaurs like my son has a page. He, it's not that, right? No. Dad jokes strong today, y'all. Did you have a Dr. Pepper right before this? I love [00:01:00] dinosaurs, by the way.

Dinosaurs, they're amazing. Are amazing. Who doesn't love them? Shout out to Project Bluefin. Uh, George Castro has a whole dinosaur theme for his Linux citro, and every season he changes the wallpaper. So like, when I update, I just get a new wallpaper and it's always some unique art of dinosaurs. I love it.

What? I didn't know. They were like, what? Okay. Oh yeah. See I have all the stickers. 'cause every scale 'em like, hit me with the do stickers, but like, I didn't know You get new wallpaper. I, I will find the wallpapers and put them in the show notes 'cause they're the new Raptor. That's amazing. Like the little sparkly raptor is fire.

Okay. Like it's going on my like work laptop. It's adorable. Oh my God. Sorry. Did you give the boys the raptor stickers from you? I completely, I completely interrupted you. You're at Dynatrace, a DH, adhd. We're also a great star. There's too much a d ADHD in this one conversation. And then you have, like, then you mentioned God dinosaurs, and then they made sparkly dinosaurs.

That was way too excited. Yeah. We went from Dynatrace to tracing dinosaurs. Yep. To sparkly dinosaurs. It's completely natural. [00:02:00] It's all good. Um, yeah, so I'm, I'm in the observability space. I, I got, I guess thrown into the open telemetry realm. I say thrown and I, I'm, I mean it like very lovingly. Um, 'cause my first, this is like my second Devereux gig.

So my first Devereux gig I worked at LightStep, which was acquired by ServiceNow. So when I joined, it was, had already been acquired. But as part of that role, um, my manager at the time wanted me to, um. Get involved and contribute to open telemetry, which made sense because, um, so many of the major observability vendors are major contributors to Open Telemetry.

So I've been, even though I've been in tech for 20, oh God, it'll be for 25 years. This year, I swear also. Like, or, or do you bleep the swears? Yeah. Uh, FYI, for anyone listening that hasn't been paying attention, we are not paying for editors for the show anywhere. We can't afford it. They were great. Uh, but they also bleep for [00:03:00] us.

So if you're listening to this with kids, there might be some expletives who listens to boring, like at DevOps tech, like podcast with kids. Some people force it on their kids as like torture. Uh, so,

okay, so I can, I can free swear. Yeah, it's, its, it's fine. We our warning outta the way. Yeah. We're good now guys. There's no editor. I can't remember what I was saying, but Yeah, I got, you know, I got, I'm, I'm in the hotel space as a result of my first dere role and I love it. Um, I'm fully in, um, so when I, when I looked for my next dere role, I wanted to make sure it was in, in observability and continuing on the open telemetry side of things.

So how'd you get involved in open, uh, hotel and like. Observability and everything. So it started, um, so the, before my first dev role role, I was actually managing two teams. I, I was managing 13 people and they hired me to manage two teams. One was a platform engineering team, [00:04:00] um, where it was all hash stack and I had come from Kubernetes land and now it's like Learn Nomad.

And also they put me to manage an observability team. And I knew not much about either of them, so I basically had to learn. Nomad and observability as I went on my job. And my thing is like I, at that point, I'd been blogging since 2020, so this was, I guess tw I wanna say it was 2022 ish when I was managing, uh, these two teams.

This was at two cows. And if you're old enough, it is that two cows, the one where you download the free window software, that two cows, yes, it still exists, but they don't, was there actually cows involved? Like was there cows? Um, so cows were actually part, very much part of the company culture. Um, yeah, everything was a cow, but they don't, they don't do like the free windows downloads anymore.

It's um, it's now a domain wholesaler, but so working. There was a, there was a computer manufacturer [00:05:00] that had cow themed stuff. Uh, gateway. Gateway. Gateway. Gateway. Gateway, gateway. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't maybe wanna buy their computers just for the cows. Right. I know. Because it was so cute. And everything came with like the cow, uh, like skin.

Yeah. Them things. Theme the spots or whatever. That's what I was saying, like if something's called two cows and I don't get a sticker with like cow. Oh, there were like, I got little, I might, oh, I have my cows. I would be so mad if she's gonna to her shop getting cows. Oh yeah. There you go. The cows. I was gonna say there better be like cows.

This is a great audio show. This is, I'm sorry. Uh, I also, Justin for you, I have my rubber chickens. So mine are, I dunno if you can see 'em. Mine are on my shelf. You can see one like head. Oh yeah, yeah. Up there. See them. Um, I, I'm gonna pull out, this is my, um, wait, there's a blue one. Oh yeah. And then, I'm sorry.

This is fully unhinged. Um, a goat. We [00:06:00] were getting a tour. I have a goat. Why do have a goat? Why not? It was at the store. I'm like, I need it. This is Jake Chicken. There you go. I'm cutting these clips just so that we can get Justin like laughing at, because it was like, it was a full Justin laugh. Like it was like he fell over and everything.

It was just, it was awful. And the rubber chickens, they get me. It's funny. Yeah. Rubber chickens are the best. The reason I bought, I bought my rubber chickens was actually for like an observability short that I did at AWS where I was like, I was, I was trying to explain to people how, um, like health checks work.

And I was like, oh, whenever you like curl a health check, it's just like, Hey, are you all right? Are you okay? And, and many people are like, oh, we don't, you know. They didn't in the past build that into their app of like, I need a health endpoint, and just say like, are you healthy or not? And I was like, what's a way to like represent that?

And I was like, well, aren't healthy enough. Rubber chicken for me, like was like, again in my my mind of like, how would I represent that? Someone said I'm okay. And so I laid out the chickens on a table. I'm like, whenever you like web. [00:07:00] You know, curl that end point. It just gives you a little squeak and it just like responds back.

I'm like, yeah, we're good, right? Oh my God, I, how did chickens we get from like healthy, are you healthy to rubber chicken? It was how I wanted to represent, Hey, A Ws bought me those rubber chickens. It was a reimbursement that I definitely did you see this? He was like, I would, oh my God, because they got me rubber chicken.

They bought, you know, my, my manager stopped asking why I was buying some things and uh, it was great, but, but it was a little short. I just wanna know like when they got like your like receipts of rights, it was all on am. When you buy it on amazon.com and you work at Amazon, it's like, this is all funny money anyway.

Like we're not, uh, God, this cost us $0. So, uh, yeah, it was fine. I love just, um, I have a little sidebar rubber chicken story. Oh no, I actually. When I was managing one of my teams and we back when it was like in person, we would do like a, a weekly, we would do our, our, our daily standup. And what we would do was, uh, when it was someone's, [00:08:00] so we'd stand in a circle in the room and when it was someone's turn to talk, we'd pass them a rubber chicken.

And then one night I'm out to drinks with a few coworkers and um, I'm like, everybody's getting rubber chickens. And so I went on Amazon and ordered little mini rubber chickens for each of my team members. So that became like, I never could even cool like that work a team raw thing. It was ever given me a rubber chicken.

Like, welcome to for Grown to find out the leading podcast about rubber chickens and squeaky roses. This is, uh, so yes. Okay. Um, and we went from observability to rubber chickens and curl in between. What's the weirdest prop that you guys have ever bought for a talk or like. A video because between the two of you, there's gotta be a good answer.

Oh, I had one of those, um, movie clickers, you know, the action thingy? Um, I have one of those. I just, it, I use that for a talk. Yeah, the clap is great for a second. Yeah. Yeah. The clapper. Yeah. My daughter stole mine.[00:09:00]

But is it the weirdest thing you've ever bought? It's the weirdest thing I've brought to a talk. The weird thing. I don't know if that's the weirdest thing. The weirdest thing that I actually did a talk with was balloons. Like I was up at Cube for my first talk. What I'm out of focus now, uh, where I actually had balloons and I had people, you can go find it, like, I think it was called Let's Build Kubernetes with volunteers in a spreadsheet.

And, and I represented the pods as balloons and I blew balloons. I actually learned how to make a balloon dog so I could make a one of the blue skirt. What? But I color coded them too, so it's like I had pink ones or red ones for Ruby. I had a, a giant blue one. They like really big blue one for Java 'cause it was just so, so large.

I had green ones for Python. Um, and then I would pop 'em because to, um, kill 'em. And so that was all part of my talk. Um, oh my God. Yeah. One of the weirdest things I bought for a video is this little thing. If anyone, no one can see it, but I can tell you about it. It's called a useless Box. And so when you flip the trigger, it has a little like arm that comes out and just turns it off.

And so that's all, it's, it's met as a, a box that just turns itself off. What. And it has a [00:10:00] Kubernetes logo on it. It has a Kubernetes logo on it. Because I say, I, I was explaining this, this useless box you go up that's adorable. Like a little arm just comes out like a little, it just creature. It just comes out and it turns it off.

It's like works there or something like it just, and so this is what, this is what a Kubernetes controller is. A Kubernetes controller is always trying to get in a certain state, it always says like, I, so the state that the machine wants it to be is off. And if I go and change that state, it goes and turns it back.

And that was the whole point, God of a Kubernetes controller is just changing the state to whatever the desired state is. That was one of my, uh, most, oh my God, I love that. It, it reminds me actually of like using cross plane for, for managing like your resources. Because I, I feel like that's one of the things I like about cross plane is like if you go to your favorite cloud provider and try to like, fuck with whatever you just created using cross plane, cross plane's gonna be like no slip, stop reconciling.

Yeah. Reconci. That's the whole point. Yeah. As opposed to the other, um, IAC tools where they're like. Oh crap, you broke us. Someone has to reconcile that [00:11:00] state. Right? Like Terraform is known for like, oh, I have a state file and every time I plan it should be able to get to that state file, to the new state file.

But oftentimes you do some JSON magic yourself to say like, I have to reconcile this as a human. Exactly. I'm the reconciler. Yep, exactly. So anyway, that was, that was like my little side side pitch for cross plane that I appreciate. My problem with cross plane was it doesn't do everything. Like there's components, it'll reconcile, but there's a lot that it doesn't reconcile.

Ah, okay. And so it's always like, Hey, which ones I did not experience that part of it. Which ones are you actually trying to reconcile here? And this was last time. Last time I used it was a couple years ago. Oh, okay. It was like, ah, I don't know if this is actually gonna reconcile the thing that I think it would.

So that's the coolest. Bizarre thing that I've ever seen bought for a talk. But that is like, I knew Justin was gonna win because the stuff that, he is ridiculous. I have a whole shelf of stuff that I, I mean, I, I had like for one talk, um, Anna, uh, Anna Margarita Medina, and I, um, we did a talk together on pop.

She's best name ever. I know, right? [00:12:00] Um, yeah. So we were doing, we were doing talk together and we were role playing. So, um, I think I played the part of developer and she played the part of platform engineer. So we had like t-shirts made with llamas on them. I love llamas. So there were different llamas. Um, one, one was like a platform engineering llama, and the other one, how'd guys go from llamas to raccoons?

Like, I love the, like, oh, okay. So like every talk I do. I have a talk mascot. So I've done llamas, I've done raccoons, kavas, um, cats hats. Um, what else? Uh, slots. Anything goes. Justin, if you were an animal, what animal would you be? A human no was an animal.

I feel like you'd be a raccoon if anyone listening to the show wants to send us your favorite talks. I love watching recorded talks, especially ones that you're unique and it kind of, but like, it has to be like a good one. Like where they like [00:13:00] really whatever's good to the people they can send us whatever they want.

I probably watch it, but like the best talks are the ones where like they're different and they're not just like some boring watching paint dry. Talks. It's true. That's why I appreciated your Barbie talk at scale. I was really worried. I thought it was gonna just be me, like making spicy takes with like memes in the background.

I was like, please, somebody like this. That was great. It was great. And having re-watched the Barbie movie after your talk, I was like, oh my God, I, you know what, I'm, I'm gonna download that so I can watch it on my plane. Did you really watch it? Watch it yet? Seriously watch. I haven't watched it yet. You're, especially this day and age, you're the best friend and podcast.

I've been trying to figure out how to edit podcasts every night. Okay. The last week has been me just trying to figure out, I've been given this. I feel your pain. I've job. Okay. I, I spent like so much time trying to figure out like different software to edit my podcast. I spent like a week trying out different ones and losing my hair over it.

Yeah. That was me all last [00:14:00] week was I need to schedule, I feel your pain get going. It is. At least once you've. Figure out your software and your workflow, then it's like, okay, but that the growing pains suck. If, if somebody wants to learn open intel, I mean open hotel and uh, open and, um, Kubernetes together.

How do you go from like 100 level to like, more than that? Because I'm seeing a bunch of 100 level courses for how to do Kubernetes and like tel, but how do you group it all together? And actually build something and go from like 100 to all the, like, everything is like super in depth, Kubernetes in production or 100 and that's all.

Yeah, you're right, you're right. So, um, as somebody, I would say there's nothing like a good work project to incentivize you to learn Nothing like being on call stuff. Okay. Yeah, that too. Or, or like writing a talk. I'm writing a talk for, for CubeCon where I am learning how to use, [00:15:00] um, Kepler, um, Kepler's a tool that tells you like the energy output of, of your pods and stuff.

Um, so for using it to tune the hotel collector. And let me tell you, there was a lot that I did not know, and I have to get a, give a huge shout out to my coworker Henrik Reid, who has figured out a lot of this stuff and has taught me his, like what he knows because there is a lot of like really gnarly ass stuff, but these types of meaningful projects where you have like a goal.

Honestly ended up being the best way to learn. Like, honestly, the, the way, like I learned Argo CD for example, at a previous job was they were, uh, it was, it was like a Microsoft shop and they were using, um, what's the thing in, in Azure where it's like, um, it's not Kubernetes. It's just like Azure. Azure.

Containers. Containers. Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I forget they have all the generic words. It's containers. They have all the generic, it's like Bernet. It's, yeah, I know, right? Um, I forget what it's called, but it's. I mean, they sell to [00:16:00] executives, right? Like that's the whole point of Azure is just like, give me the obvious thing.

The executive says, I wanna buy DevOps. Like, great, we have a service. Exactly. You can buy DevOps. Here you go. Exactly. Yeah. So, so they were trying to move, looking into moving from like this Azure container, whatever it was, to Kubernetes. And I was like doing some POCing for them. And I was like, oh, well you need like a proper workflow.

So I, I learned how to install like Argo cd, um, on Kubernetes. I didn't know anything about Argo cd. I knew enough about Kubernetes to be dangerous, but I had to like having this mission. Um, like really upped my Kubernetes game, like a fair bit. Um, and if it weren't for that, like I, I would've probably still been in the 100 levels, like playing with easy stuff.

Yeah. I'm looking into it and there's nothing in the middle. Like, I do think that your videos are actually good, not just because I'm your friend, but because they're actually really good. 'cause I was like, I don't understand this. And then Justin's like, and then you pour water in. And I was like, oh, I love your videos.

Like, [00:17:00] you're, you're like, oh my God. Make Kubernetes make sense. I, I've come to, like, I have this theory right now that most of this, like split between a hundred level and 400 level is, is usually comes down to those like project based learning, where a hundred level is, is really just like learning how to read, right?

Like my, my youngest is learning how to read right now. And like, you have to learn what the symbols sound like, right? Like, you have to learn all this stuff that you don't know anything about it, and you're just like, this, none of this makes sense. But now he's reading some things and it's starting to, he has the vocabulary to like read a couple things and he's like, oh, that sign says this.

I'm like, great, you're doing a great job. You know, like, but he needs the chapter book, right? He needs the, he needs to get to the point where he has a project that has an end goal of, I finished this book, or I did this thing. Now I understand what that was. And so when I look at the difference between my kids, it's like one is learning the sounds, the other one is finishing books and now is finishing series.

Right? And that's where he's at. Like he's reading all of, uh. He just, he loves the Percy Jackson. What's [00:18:00] the other one? Um, Catniss. Uh oh yeah. Oh, uh, series. That's where Hunger Games. Hunger Games. Finishing Hunger. Hunger Games. And that's like, he's at 400 level now, right? Yeah. Like, he's like, he's at, or at least 300 level.

Right? It's like, it's not like adult stuff, but like, he's also doing like Edgar and Poe in school and that sort of stuff. It's like, oh, you're getting to the hard stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Like this is where like you need to be able to understand the meaning behind the sounds and the words to put it all together to paint the picture.

And that's where I feel like this big gap is like where you're at a hundred level. Yeah. You're just learning the alphabet in sounds and doing small words, but you can't understand a story necessarily. You can't read it by yourself. That's actually really true because there, I feel like there's like a huge gap in kids learning.

Like there's this, I don't know, I was reading this thing about how learning is not something that comes naturally to children anymore. And like, so when you're learning the ABCs and the sounds and everything, it's completely different than the stamina that you need to get through. Like intense, like. The desire to read.

Yeah. Well, no, it's not even the desire because my kid will go around [00:19:00] in circles and find ways to like a DHD, like audio books and everything else, and get things to read about. Well, your kids are hackers. They want the outcome. They don't wanna do the work. They're very highly motivated. Like that motivation piece is like, I don't know, when my oldest went from reading basic words to reading chapter books, somewhere in there he wanted to do it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he got the motivation. And that's where like a lot of these projects fall down where you can't teach someone 200 level. You have to let them, what's the, what's the phrase of like, you have to give them the, the yearn for the ocean. Right? Like, don't teach someone how to sail. Don't teach 'em to go, what is it?

The don't, don't give somebody fish. Teach them how to fish. Yeah. Teach, teach them fish. Yeah, sure. But like, they have to want fish. Like they have to wanna eat some fish. Right. Like, I don't like fish. I'm not gonna go do it. Right. See, my kids want something too bad though. Like, I think because I've been reading to them since they were like teeny, itty bitty babies, that they're reading comprehension and what they want to read is so much higher than their reading comprehension that they wanna like.

At some point that yeah, that learning journey comes down to like, you have to want to do the chapter book. [00:20:00] Yeah. To be able to get to the 400 level. And I think that's a big gap for any, it's not just tech, right? Like any industry. Even just reading. Right. It is a hard problem. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, and, and I, there's nothing better than like an incentive.

Like you wanna, there's like a cool thing you wanna try to do, and then it's like, okay, I have a mission now and it's something that I'm interested in. 'cause I, I remember like, so my dad taught me how to code when I was 10. He introduced me to basic, GW basic for those who remember back in the day of the dinosaurs, the sparkly dinosaurs, back to dinosaurs.

This is great. Back to dinosaurs. And I remember like, it didn't really like. Make a whole lot of sense to me. Like, you know, I and I would sit and like read computer books, you know, those thick ass, like very boring computer books and it'd be like, oh, whatever. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. And then I took my first computer class in, in high school and it was visual Basic.

And now we suddenly had a mission and it's like, oh [00:21:00] you can, you know, like you have an assignment where you can create a program to do whatever and like I created a game, I created a blackjack game and then all of a sudden now I have something interesting to do. So now I'm motivated to learn. So, you know, it's like, okay, I need to get, go from A to B.

What are the steps that I need to do? What's the hardest thing that you both have had to learn over your career? 'cause you've gone and got the both the 20 years kind of in tech. Oh damn. I'll say for myself, it's just the, the people dynamics of software. Really. I was gonna say, people es in all of this, the people is the hard part.

Yes. The, the people, like people is the hardest part. Understanding the, the politics and the process and the people and the impact it has on other people has been difficult for me. My entire career is as far as like, I'm always, I've always been a little reckless in, in the fact that like, I will try to adopt new things and I Spicy tank.

No, I'm just joking. But like, like when, when Kubernetes was coming around and I was trying [00:22:00] to adopt it at, but how did you get into Kubernetes? I know that you used to do like the help desk and stuff, and then I know that you were assistant like admin, but like how did you actually start using Kubernetes?

Kubernetes was a ticket in Jira that said let the web team self deploy applications. Literally, that's all it said. And so we were on-prem Disney animation and we had a small web team. We had almost no web services, but there was a team that ran some web services internally and the Jira ticket just let them self deploy.

I'm like, well, what does that mean? And we had servers and VMs and config management and all this stuff. I'm like, well, I'm not gonna teach them Puppet. I'm not gonna teach them to, like right now. The, the process was they send an email, they get a vm, they SSH, they deploy whatever they want. That's their machine.

They own it forever. And I'm like, well, what if they had like dynamic ways of doing this? And I was already playing with Kuber, or not Kubernetes containers and just like, oh, well we could package it as a container. They mostly wrote Ruby and Python. And I'm like, oh, well, like I need those to be contained so they don't interfere with other languages.

All that stuff on the host. I'm like, Hey, cool. Just do these containers. Here's some container package as a container. I built them some base containers. We gave them some generic [00:23:00] container hosts, set up some load balancing DNS, like, cool. I put it in a spread. I literally put it in a spreadsheet like this is the spreadsheet now.

This is where your containers run. These are the hosts, these are the endpoints, all that stuff. Here's the repo when it goes down, these people get paged. All that stuff. And then I went on vacation. And I was like, oh, oops, I, I have to be on vacation now. This is a spreadsheet I gave it, I tried to teach my team like, this is how this thing works.

This is where it runs. And they're like, I don't know any of that. Does, like, who cares? Like, why'd you do it that way? And I'm like, okay, I need something that automates that side of it. And so like discovered, like I was deeply going down the rabbit hole of Mesos and Nomad because we run high performance computing environments, doing render jobs, and we had custom schedulers and I'm like, oh, cool.

Mesos and Nomad Nomad didn't have custom schedulers, but it had fast batch workloads and Mesos had a custom scheduler you could build. So I was deploying that stuff and like, oh, this seems like it would replace our internal scheduler. And it ended up not working out for various reasons. But I actually sat down with, uh, Kelsey, uh, Hightower.

Um, he literally tweeted like, I'm [00:24:00] in LA for a few hours to kill. What should I do? I'm like, drive out to Burbank. I'll show you around the Disney lot. And we just spent three hours together, get out. And I was like, this is great. Like it was my second time meeting him and he just came up. The way that you meet people is just fired.

Oh my God. And so like we were just talking, I was like, Hey, I was telling him about, I'm doing this Mesos thing. We already have other parts of Disney have Mesos. We're gonna do Mesos, we're gonna deploy it. I have these custom schedulers I wanna run. I like, I didn't, he asked me why I didn't do Kubernetes.

I'm like, well, 'cause it doesn't have a custom scheduler. He's like, yes it does. He's like, all the APIs are there. It's just not documented. This is like Kubernetes one, 1.2. 1.1. Something like that. Yeah. Like super early Kubernetes. I'm like, well it's not there. He is like, no. He's like, the APIs are there, you just have to try it.

And so I literally spent the next like three weeks all every lunch breakout I'd spend on GK cluster. I love the way you neuro spicy, just dive right. And I'm like, let's see if he's right. Like I like, I'm like, okay, is this enough for what I wanted? And I built a scheduler outta bash. I learned the API, it's still up by my GitHub.

You can, it's like called Bash Scheduler and so like just a project to learn coupons. I was like, if I, if I can build this enough in bash a schedule a pod to [00:25:00] go to wherever I want, then it's, I understand the APIs enough and so I build a schedule outta bash over a week or two, just like lunch breaks. I'm just like A GKA cluster.

Lemme see if this bash thing works. And I'm like, okay, I get it now. And they're like, well, I'm gonna deploy Kubernetes now. So I went through, it was like a three month process and the entire thing failed because I did not understand the impact that Kubernetes would have for other people's jobs. That that was literally, Hey, I can replace you with this.

Control group now. Mm-hmm. I don't, you don't need to do that thing anymore. And that is very hard for people to like, well, you can't replace me. Like, this is, this is my livelihood. Like this is the impact of technology on people's lives was the hardest thing for me to learn. That was really hard being That is so true.

I, I have a similar story, um, 'cause I like the way I got into DevOps and, and I think this, this ties in nicely too with your question autumn of, of like, how, how do you up your game, right? How do you go from, from 100 to 400 level? I got into DevOps because I had like a really bad deployment that everything went wrong.

Like we used to, I worked at a bank for 11 years. [00:26:00] Um, please pity me. 'cause uh, and, and we, we deployed stuff to prod by basically writing up a Word doc with instructions that we sent over to a team in India and we didn't even know who. From that team in India would get the doc. And so I had to rely on my instructions being correct, them reading my instructions correctly, and them executing correctly.

And of course, like one weekend everything went wrong that could possibly go wrong and I was sick and I lost my voice. So a thing that should have taken a couple of hours did not. And I remember bitching to my dad about it, 'cause he is in tech and he's like, you should look at DevOps. I'm like, Ooh, this sounds amazing.

And so I'm like, I'm gonna automate all the things. So I, I automated all the things. Uh, on my, on my team. And of course like nobody, it was like you, it's like you do all the work and then nobody knows like how this, how this shit works, right? And someone needs to come up with the name for the phase of when you discover automation and then you lose your mind a little bit, then you start automating things that like, it's actually harder to automate them than do it [00:27:00] manually because it's the high of automating things.

Like it's a whole thing. It is. It's a huge high. So, you know, so this got me in into DevOps and then around like, I don't know, a few months later, um, the same bank that I was working on, they were like standing up a DevOps department. So they were getting like kind of mandating everybody, thou shalt do DevOps, um, which included then we had to like.

Convince everyone who's being forced to do DevOps, that they needed to do DevOps. So that's how I got into like unofficial developer advocacy. 'cause I wrote internal blog posts and we hosted like open houses and, and stuff to get people excited about DevOps. We did like, um, a Star Wars themed open house.

So we got like, some dude dressed up as a storm trooper and did photo ops with him, and we learned about DevOps. You know what, I wanna work for you. I never got rubber chickens. Chickens and Star Wars. Yes. My, my brainchild. So, but as part of it, like, so we, we figured out like on the DevOps side. We got the CI part down pat, like we even came up with like internal tooling [00:28:00] that, um, basically created like, um, a DevOps pipeline that adhered to our standards and practices because we realized that you can't trust people to follow standards and practices.

You have to like give them guardrails and the end, we got to the part where we were getting to the delivery part. Right? And, and teaching, um, teaching the, the ops people Ansible and they were not interested because one of the things, one, one of the big challenges was, um, a lot of these guys, they, they would be monitoring emails after hours to see like what was broken.

Hey, is there like a database that needs to be restarted? A server that needs to be restarted, right? And all of a sudden, um, or, or like swoop in to like fix, fix whatever problems happening. Um, and a lot of the problems that they were encountering, um. Uh, potentially could have been, uh, reduced significantly through, through automation.

Right? Um, and they, there was a huge resistance. First of all, it's like you're te telling me I have to like learn this new [00:29:00] tool and now I'm not gonna be working as many hours anymore because I'm not gonna be manually executing stuff. I'm just pressing a button. So there was a lot of resistance and unfortunately, um, because the people running that department were also like, uh, I think this is one of those cases where, where.

You almost get too close to the people you're working with where you're like, oh my God, we can't do this to family. You we're, we're destroying the family. Like, so there was a lot of resistance, um, from, from the people running the department, um, to also embracing the change. And so it never, it never reached its full potential because of all this internal resistance.

So it's like, we got the CI part, but not the cd. And I, I feel like that that was kind of like the, the one frontier that a lot of organizations sort of failed at, um, is that there, there was the resistance of the old ops guard to actually, um, changing the way that they did things. And it's really hard to bring people along, right?[00:30:00]

So like, 'cause you can't, it's hard to catch them up, right? Yeah. So all of your discoveries and all the things that you're doing, it's like, oh, I can go from where you're at to like where you're gonna be and like, help them understand that. Like, you're not trying to replace them. You're not trying to, you're trying to help everybody grow in, in advance.

And some people just don't want to. And that's, again, have we ever felt bad about bringing somebody, bringing people along? 'cause I think it's interesting when, like, I was a database used architect, we were pitching managed databases, right? So you're gonna get rid of DBAs and a bunch of people that are no longer managing that database.

But now it's interesting because now everybody wants to run things on OnPrem and get rid of their managed databases because they've got expensive and everybody wants to move to Postgres. And there isn't a lot of DBAs and people to run things truly OnPrem. So like, isn't it interesting the cycles that you run through and then what if Yeah.

The fact that people use so many managed databases now, it's harder to find people to actually do Yeah. The skillset's not there anymore, right? Like, but, and, and, but this is like the un you know, we all like bitch about like, oh, [00:31:00] AI's gonna take our jobs. But it's like, if, if you're willing to just like retool mm-hmm.

And learn whatever kind of skills in demand, I think like generally be okay. You know what I mean? It's like. There's always the evolution. I think there should be programs for that though. Like where like, Hey, you won't lose your job if you can continue to re-skill because like, maybe not a program, but just some sort of like way to do that.

Because I honestly think like, like think about it, tech is the cycles of replacing something with better to make it. Yeah. You know, like less painful and PE people would do better at embracing it if they didn't feel like fear, like they were gonna lose their jobs. But like that's kind of interesting 'cause what you said is totally true.

It's like the AI's gonna take your job, but. There's been several, uh, cycles of that already. So I don't know if that makes me hopeful because it hasn't taken our jobs yet. Adrian, the story, your story started with, I used to write a word doc to send to someone for deploy. Yeah. Like that was literally like when I started Si admin, like we would write a wiki page and then you would have to [00:32:00] read the like step by step, like let make sure I copied the right characters out.

'cause I wasn't Yep. Manually typing this. And people forget that. Like, that wasn't that long ago. This wasn't that. Like those people are all retired. I'm like, no, I'm still here. Like this is like, this was, this was like 2016. Yeah, but it's, but it's also interesting because look at how your careers have evolved.

So like, you guys are the epitome of the people that did up skill and kind of move with the changes. You know, like you're not doing the spreadsheets and the stuff that you were doing before. And look at how like many, I don't know, like lives of career that your careers have had, which is kind of cool. I, I think there's gotta be that, that curiosity, right?

That desire to learn. Like, I don't know, I, maybe it's my A DHD where I get bored easily. But I, but also like with, with my bank story, like the, the, the ops people who refuse to learn Ansible because they were very comfortable with status quotes. Like, I have my nine to five job and I'll check my emails after hours and get my overtime pay.

And some of these guys got so much money in overtime pay that they could afford Teslas. [00:33:00] That's why the forbidden, the forbidden T word. Do you think, I'm sorry. What do you think the next evolution is going to be like in DevOps, you know? Oh, the next evolution in DevOps? Um, I honestly, I think the, I I hate, I don't know, love, love to hate to say it.

Um, a AI is gonna be like our, our DevOps buddy and I, I, I, I mean that in the best way possible. 'cause I think AI can probably, you know, suggest things to us that we might not necessarily, if, if there's one thing I've learned in my career is that people do not read. They will not read a log file. They'll not read an error message.

That's so true. They'll not, and if AI just reads the message and then just sends it back to them. I'm so excited that you said that because it was so real though. Like it's just, hence this is why people write ads per my email. It's like, it's not even fucking read it. People will not read. I've been on both sides though, so like I can't even throw shade.

Yeah, no, it's, it's definitely been [00:34:00] to like, but did you see two like paragraphs down and I'm like, oh, I skimmed that part. Sorry. Yeah, I know. I, I, I'm guilty. I find the very interesting about that is yeah, people don't, will not read the message. They will not read the error message. They go directly to the AI bot and say, tell me what this means.

Like I just read you an error. Like what? Like just Google that thing for you. Right. It's right here. But like Google, it's funny though though, because it's like, it's like VMs in the cloud, right? Like, or like, it's like servers in the cloud. But it's the same thing. It's like just it's read. It's ting the, the, uh, information in a different way.

And I wonder if like for a DHD brains, because you can get it, like summarized what you're looking for and you don't have to skim it. Do you think that improves the process? Well, I mean, the amount of times that I've copy and pasted someone's error messages they sent to me and said, your answer's right here.

It's in the error message you sent me. I know, right? I don't even know. Is that rubber ducking though? In a way? No, no, that's, that's lazy ducking. I don't know. I, I have to admit, like even yesterday I was debugging something for my talk and I'm like, what the hell does this error message mean? It [00:35:00] was like some, it was some like rback thing, and it's telling me like the Kubernetes logs are telling me exactly the, the, the, the permissions I'm missing wall.

I, I've totally done that. I'm not even gonna, it's pretend like I have it. Like I've totally been like, what is this? And Justin's like right there. No, for sure. I've spent whole days on debugging something because I did not read the thing. But the problem I have is like, as the systems get more complex, as the logs get more places, right?

I, I was testing ai. What was the notebook? LLM. Google's thing or whatever. Now it's not, uh, for like white papers. And I was like, I read three white papers in a row. I wrote my own notes and then I sent them to Notebook, LLM, and I said, okay, now gimme a summary of this thing. And listened to the podcast. I did the podcast version of it and the summary of it and all three of those papers, the important thing that I learned from all the papers was not in any of the summaries.

I've had that too. I've had the, oh yeah, I get the summary back from my meetings at work and it messes them up. Like, I'm not saying that they're not good if, like, if you missed the [00:36:00] meeting, cool. Right. Like if you needed something from it. But it's not the same as listening because it doesn't know what to prioritize and it's, it's agrees going for patterns.

Right? So it has no idea what the actual value prop and what was important in those conversations. So some of the times it'll either meld to like events that were talked about separately together. So I still have to go and watch the recording, you know, but I can like. Passively watch it, but it's not a, it is not an even.

Okay, I missed it. And I can watch the summary because it, every time, like even when I'll use a summary and start using the summary as an up thing to update, it always has to be changed. Yep. Yeah, I agree. And uh, like I've actually, for a while I was using a, um, an AI tool for my podcast i'd, um, I'd feed it the video, it would transcribe it, and then I would ask for it to come up with like social media copy and it would like obsess over like the stuff that I'm like, why are you obsessing over this?

Like, stop it. And I kind of gave up on, on, on using it [00:37:00] because I'm like, you know what, if, if it's still like fresh in my head as I'm like going through the transcript, like, I don't need it, but I, I feel you so hard. It's so weird what AI will fixate. There's something about the human brain that already knows what's important from a conversation that AI has not been able to figure out with like pattern matching.

It doesn't know, like, I don't know, it doesn't know how to pick like the main subjects that were important. Yeah. Yeah.

Just wait until Skynet comes, as comes out and like controls us all as you're, as we're talking, I'm writing notes so that I won't have to use the AI tool later. I'm like, oh, yeah, because I summary. No, seriously. Like I've, I've done that. I've done that before too. I'm like, Ooh, this is a really good point.

I'm gonna remember that. But isn't it interesting, even the AI tools that we've tried for the podcast, some of them are good and some of them are so far off. Like, yeah, it's, it's wild. I, I feel your pain. Um, my, my conclusion is like, use, use ai, use AI with caution for, for these types of things. Yeah. [00:38:00] I definitely think it's fun to make it, like, if I wanna put like, bullet points down and I want something to summarize and try to make it sound smarter, like, you know, like kind of get it into like more of a paragraph and then I go and put my own stuff in there.

Like, it, it's great for unblocking me, but it's never been a finished product for me. Yeah. I feel you. I, I will also say, speaking of ai, I don't know if this is a spicy take, but please don't use AI to write like your CFPs. Oh my gosh. Like, for the love of God, don't for, for everyone that's on a committee for a conference, uh, and has to read all of the AI submitted.

Do you think they just get the same talk over and over again? No. People that give the same talk have a set, like they have a good paragraph. Usually they're like, this is a good title. No, but I mean, like, do you think AI is spitting the same talk for everybody out? Like, you know, like when they're like, 'cause I definitely know people who use it to get ideas, but they write the actual talk.

Like, they'll be like, which is fine. Like maybe you need a, an idea generator. But do you think some people are [00:39:00] actually submitting the same talks? Because AI is suggesting the same talks different, oh, two different people submitting the same, same idea. I mean, I've never thought of that. There's a lot of overlap.

I don't know. Um, any conference that's significant in any like size is gonna get, you know, a handful of the same type of talk. Do even at scale think there's anything that, like, that points out to you that like it is AI generated. It's the words, it's the words, the vibe completely. Yeah. I'm actually wor, I'm worly worried that.

People are relying on it so much and we're rewriting a lot of it, but we're reading it so often that I know the more I read a type of writing, the more I start to write that way, that what I read, and at some point I'm gonna naturally AI write to to myself. Yes. Right? Yes. Well, not just that, but that happened to me.

I was writing, I was writing A CFP and it was like my words and I was, I was co-writing it with someone and I turned to them like, oh my God, this sounds like ai. Yeah. And it's not, it's like written by me, but like there, it's actually, [00:40:00] they did a study and they said that so much of what is out there right now has been polluted by ai, like, um, talks and blogs and just so much content that it is making so much content at a higher speed and like at a bigger volume than humans, that so much of it is starting to re pollute itself.

Yep. So when you Oh, yeah. I could see that our humans are going out to look for AI's training on AI content. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And not just that, but, but humans are training on it because when we go out to look for research, so many blogs are written by AI now. Yeah. That, and I, it's what we're finding. I agree.

And I find that very unfortunate, um, because I think, like, one of my, I love writing and one of my favorite things about writing, um, especially that I find different from like high school English, where it was like very formal essays. My writing is very colloquial. And so the way I speak is the way I write.

And I have lots of fun with that. And I feel like a lot of the AI writing that you get out [00:41:00] there is like, I don't knows, like it's gotta pull up its ass and monotone and, and repetitive too. That's another thing, like I think sometimes you can tell it's ai, uh, an AI blog post because it just goes around in circles saying the same thing, but in slightly different ways.

I mean, don't me wrong, I've said I've done that too, but like AI does it in like the most boring paint drying way. Yes, exactly. Yeah. I mean, I'm totally guilty of that too. Yeah. Even when I talk, there's also a, a portion of this where I feel like it's super useful for people that don't know the language natively.

Right? Like I've, I've spent a lot of time with people that are not native English speakers, and they're like, I'm sorry, I'm using AI to help me write this thing. Hey. And I'm like, I'm, by all means, I will spend some time with you to make sure that we, we try to get to the bottom of what you're working on.

See, that's like resourcefulness, like you're using Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. Tool to help you bridge a gap in that. Like I'm all for, and I think like that's the way that we should use ai, [00:42:00] right? To help get better than what you started with. As long as you've got, like, whether it be someone like you helping them or something, it's something to make the like finished piece, just verified, even if you're sending it to your friend.

Like, I don't know if you guys do that, but I definitely will send like a blog or something or like a talk to my friend and be like, does this suck? Like is it good? Like, you know, I think one of the problems with that is every text box on the internet is becoming filled with AI and for, and they're kind of encroaching it.

Like, it's like, oh, I'll rewrite this. I don't want you to leave it alone. Yeah. But, but especially for open source. Right? The limitation of open source is maintainers time. Right. Like you can copy the software as much as you want, but the maintainer time is super valuable and you have to be able to be concise and only communicate the things you need.

And as those boxes are filling up more and more with randomly generated stuff, that maybe it's a tool to help someone, but also maybe it's just a, I made this more verbose because I [00:43:00] didn't read the error message. Uh, is difficult because now we're not, the maintainer iss not saving any time. The AI's not helping the maintainer summarize those because they're not, you can't summarize someone else's problem the same way.

'cause you're gonna miss those important details. Right? Yeah. Like all of those things. I think all of the, yeah, I, it's constantly, it just funny because like, so like we were talking about automation earlier, right? Like there's, in DevOps there's just kind of like you have to have this balance and kind of marriage of humans.

And automation because if you automate too many things, it doesn't work. And it has its own issues if you like. 'cause you can automate yourself outta documentation. You can automate things that are too complicated to automate, yada yada. Humans have their own human error, right? And you want to automate like repetitive tasks because your brain is just going to mess it up if you have to do too many repetitive tasks, right?

Yep. But it's like funny because it's like the same problems that humans have sometimes are what AI has. Humans forget to ask for enough context, but we have like inherent context and AI [00:44:00] cannot get the context. So it's like, yes. It's just funny to see that there's so many like patterns that repeat even in our, like our kind of search to make, to get rid of those patterns, you know?

Yeah, that's so true. And, and, and what you mentioned about context, I think is probably one of the hardest things and, and actually one of the. One of the things that I find most frustrating in technical documentation, especially like a blog post or or official docs somewhere, is that assumption that, you know what the fuck they're talking about.

That makes me so mad. Like I never want to, like, it makes me mad fight documentation so much in my entire life when they assume that you know something and I'm like, I wouldn't be here trying to learn it with you. You idiot. Like, what do you mean? I know, right? Like it makes me so mad, but like, it's like those, oh, sorry.

Go ahead. Oh, I just think that that's when like you should take something. Like if you're going to make documentation for something or if you're going to tell people how to do something, you should [00:45:00] find someone like, whether it be like a kid or someone that has no knowledge of that thing, and then try to teach it to them and then like have them talk back to you because like, this is why I think also like not having junior engineers is really gonna mess things up.

Because how many people have we talked to that they're like, well, we wanna be remote or we wanna do this, or we wanna be a startup so we're only gonna hire senior engineers. Cool beans. But you ruin so many senior engineers when they don't have to teach a junior engineer. They forget how to teach things.

They forget. There's so much context to like having people remind you where other people started. Like there's so many muscle memories that you need there that you're losing by not having junior engineers. Is that also one of the problems with the 100 to 400 level content split where. If I'm writing a 300 level documentation, I'm not going to link to a bunch of 100 level things because A, no one clicks the links.

We all know, like, everyone's like, ah, I'm not gonna, I love a good link, [00:46:00] but like, if you, if my first paragraph is eight links, you're not gonna stop and go read the links. Even if I tell you stop here, I probably won't, but I, right. But I appreciate the courtesy, especially if it's, but also when I, when I blog, but if I get, I'll link to death because I'm assuming there's like some P muck out there who's like, you know, newbie version of me who's like, IP Muck, what are you talking about?

Every one of those links, just because it gives me more context. It doesn't matter if you just leave the tab open, you have to read it. Sh Hey rude. I read the first two paragraphs, Justin and I skim the rest. You know, you don't have to tell people you really know me and that like you're my friend. Good.

Like I, I will say, but I do though. I, I, I do wanna go back to your junior engineer comment. 'cause the other thing that I find in infuriating about like people who dis on hiring junior engineers is that there is something that junior engineers have that more seasoned engineers do not have, [00:47:00] which is this naivete.

Like, they're not jaded yet. And so they bring this amazing perspective to you. This sort of cheeriness that kind of reminds you of like, oh my god, I was like that before. Um, and they bring fresh eyes because, you know, teach, they're oftentimes fresh outta school. Sorry. It's like when you have to teach your kids something.

Yeah. And you remember the magic of experiencing that for the first time. Exactly. Exactly. Like sometimes I've had junior engineers that have been better than my more senior engineers because they bring a fresh perspective to it. And, and, and that's another thing too, like I, I think we have, like in our society we have this sort of almost hierarchy where we expect like, um, to be mentored up, right?

Like your mentor has to be someone higher up than you, but we usually forget that reverse mentoring is baller. I did that at Amazon. Exactly. And it was wild how much the l sevens would learn from the junior people and the junior people are learning from [00:48:00] that. Like the more, like higher up people. But it's just, it's amazing how that becomes, this symbiotic, both like exactly a reciprocal relationship.

Yeah, exactly. Like people have to get their heads out of their asses with regards to like, oh, this person's junior. They have nothing to teach me. It's weird. You are junior and you probably have a lot to teach me because you're, you've got a different perspective than me. I feel like when we say that we need diverse voices and perspectives, people think that that just means like brown people or women, but like it also means people that came from a completely different background for you.

Yeah. People that have different experience levels, because everybody, like when you see someone who's about to be a senior engineer. But not quite. A senior engineer and a senior engineer have a technical argument. Both of them have valid points. One has more experience, but sometimes one can have more of like wanting to take a chance.

Yeah. And those have been some of the best arguments I've ever watched have. Like technical and it's almost like you get some popcorn and then you learn more than you'd learn in a college class, like in [00:49:00] 30 minutes because they're arguing the points. But almost in like to me, like I hate. Like reading through something when it's like super long and drawn out.

But that's almost like summarizing technical documentation and watching it played out in front of you. And it's like, it's like watching someone debug. Yes. It's one of those, those fascinating things when you watch someone that they're like live streaming, coding, stuff like that. Like when someone's like in an ops call and they're like, they're debugging a system.

Just knowing what questions they ask, where they're looking for the context that they need to solve a problem learned so much. Watching like a senior engineer go into the man pages and then come back and then do a grip and find for something and then, you know what I mean? Like it's just they're constantly just trying to reevaluate, yes, what is actually going on here?

How is this working? And you just understand where they're looking and where they're trying to find their context. It's all process like the same, like I learned that. Through going through art school and then going to something technical. A lot of times people will be like, well, you do all this and do that.

And I'm like, well, what's your process? Where do you start and where do, what do you do when you start getting like stuck? And it's weird 'cause I think that the society's got this weird take towards junior engineers through [00:50:00] kids, through like a bunch of like anything that they deem inconvenient and not up to their speed.

But like I just look at people and I'm like, all of you, like a-holes were all kids. At one point you were all junior engineers. Yeah. And if people gave you like the kindness and let you fail and let you learn, why can't you give that like same courtesy to other humans? It was given to you and that's how you got here.

Somebody mentored you, somebody made you, let you say a bunch of dumb things first and try some stuff that didn't work. And sometimes it did work and that's why you're here, you know? I agree. I agree. And, and I, I will also say, um, the same happens. For like older people in tech, you know, you see like an a, someone who looks really old.

Oh my goodness. And you're like, oh my God, they don't know anything. And you know, like you get, the tendency is to have that bias in the same way that, you know, you look at the junior, you're like, oh, they know nothing. Like what? Ageism is a thing. Like I, my the age. Yeah. It's like horrible. She's amazing. And she is probably like younger than me in spirit.

And like, [00:51:00] people will, like, she's dealt with so many things with ageism and I'm just like, I don't understand. They're just gonna look at you and think, I don't want all your experience and all the good things that, like how, you know what I mean? Like, I'm just like, I don't, like, I just feel like when you have people that, and especially if somebody is a good teacher and a super senior engineer like that is just, it's like almost like growing your org at operations of magnitude.

Because when someone comes in and they've taught different technologies and they've been on different teams, and they've kind of lived through that life cycle of, you know, having different jobs in tech, they, they not only know whatever technology you're hiring them for, but they know how to learn and they know how to teach people.

So like, you just know that you're bringing, like, if you do a good job, you know, interviewing and hiring them, you know that you're bringing in a false multiplier. You know? But I mean, that goes all the way back to what we started with, where you have to be motivated to learn and change, right. Because not everyone is motivated to learn [00:52:00] and change, and plenty of people are comfortable, right?

Like Adriana, like someone that's comfortable in their job and they're like, I don't want to change. I'm not gonna learn something new. I'm gonna retire in five years. Yeah, great. Like they, they don't have to, I can't, those people, and they're probably not the person you want to, like, I know for myself, like, I will probably not want to learn new things at some point in my life, and that's gonna be like, I'm just gonna like, eh.

I'm kind of like, I don't need to learn a bunch of new stuff. Like I'm not gonna, you're gonna be the grandma with pink hair learning new things because I'll be bored. I, I could totally see you being the grandma with pink hair learning new. It's gonna be rad. I love it. But at some point, like people just get in that groove of like, I know enough of my boundaries.

I am comfortable here. I don't have to do any other hard work. I don't have to work the nights and weekends. I don't have to spend extra mental effort on this stuff. I'm just like, I know my lane and I'm gonna stay in it for the rest of my career and I'll coast here. And there's a lot of people there. And there's a lot of people at the other end of that where they're so junior, they don't know what lanes exist, and they're just like, and they wanna do all three lanes at once.

And you're like, calm down bro. [00:53:00] This is a little too much. Like just. For real. But I feel like there's, you have to give them that motivation in both sides of, Hey, do you want to do something different? If you don't, that's okay. Like, not everyone has to be upping their game all the time. I do know for myself that by constantly doing that and learning new technologies and pushing people, maybe in situations I shouldn't, but pushing myself.

Yeah. It's just like, oh, it opened up more opportunities for me to be able to explore new things and change my career. Well, also there's sometimes where something simple and something that people have been using for a long time will get the job done better than the new technology, and so that's, that is valid.

You just have to know when to concede. I, I agree. And I, I, I have a story from, from my early days. I, I was a Java developer for many years, and one of my early projects. We were doing, uh, I, I was working in telecom and we were doing like, um, we were doing some ETL like custom ETL work, um, migrating from like one [00:54:00] system to a new system, um, for, for networking, for managing networking equipment.

And, um, they, the, the company we were using, they had a Java API and it was like a massive migration of data and we started doing like some benchmarking, like it was so fucking slow with Java, but they also had a PL, S-Q-L-A-P-I. If, if people out there remember Oracle, P-L-S-Q-L, and, and we, we did a bunch, we did some testing and we're like, oh shit.

The P-L-S-Q-L-A-P-I is so much faster. And I, I remember being really mad because I'm like, I was in my early twenties, I wanna do Java. I'm like, what the hell? I'm gonna do this P-L-S-Q-L crap and it's gonna like ruin my career. Um, this is not, you know, like not marketable skill. How dare they? But, um, I had to put my ego aside and admit that like this was the better way to do it.

Like, I, I think sometimes we do get to, we do have this tendency of being, um, blinded by the, by [00:55:00] the shiny new thing. And as, as Autumn was saying, like, you know, it's like sometimes the simpler solution is the better solution. And so this was like a huge lesson for me that like. You gotta just put your biases aside, go with a thing that works better.

And it turned out to be like a good thing for me 'cause I learned like database performance tuning, um, as a result. But like, yeah, I spent three weeks trying to write a Python script and I was like, Python is so much better than Bash and it's gonna be great. And then dependencies and package managers and all kind of dumb things.

Oh shit. Totally got me. And just. Then it took five lines of Bash and my senior engineer was right and I had to like totally, oh no. Did you cry? I want it to, I hate bash so much, but sometimes it's really good at taking, I know. Write Python. You can like write this beautiful like little command line program, put it in functions.

It's beautiful. You know, AI is really good at writing Bash. Just fyi, 'cause there's so much out there. Can we stop? Why don't we talk about [00:56:00] That's smart. That is what use AI for smart because sometimes smart will make, make you so mad smart and you're just like, that's smart. Why does this, why does this need a space here?

This is so, it look, bash makes me types of angry that I am ashamed of that. I, I I can understand. I love, I love writing some bash scripts and I, but it is so freaking useful. Like I have learned my lesson and I'm not saying that I won't try to write a Python script every now and then. 'cause I'd rather write a Python, but sometimes a stupid CR job.

Write it in Bash. Put it somewhere and have it do its job. It's true. Throw some RegX in there. Ask Google for lots of help. Pray it works out and it's just, it's the right thing to do. Okay. I've told you my rules for when I stopped writing Bash, right? Like I think I've said it on the show, or at least I ship it.

No, I have three rules for when, like I will start any software in Bash the first time. I'm just like, I'm gonna prototype the experience of it, whether it works or not. I'm gonna stub out some things, but I will move off of Bash once it either gets to more than a hundred lines of code where it's like I need, I need a hundred line bash script.

And [00:57:00] beyond that, you get like 45 lines. You've don't, I've written far. Yeah, I don't think I've ever written, I've definitely written like multi hundred line bash scripts and I'm like, this is a mistake. Like, I shouldn't be doing this, but after a hundred lines, that's like 47. And I was like, I, mm, bad decisions were made.

Yeah. Damn, I'll, I'll, I'll tip out at a hundred. And I'm like, okay, I, I don't wanna do this anymore. I'm gonna move to another, a different language that has some other proper importing and stuff like that. Or if I have to use a associative array or a, an array in bash, like, it's just like, it's calling. It is so garbage, it hurts my soul, right?

Like, I'm just like, oh, I hate looping these things and if anytime I need an array or, or a map or whatever you wanna call it, whatever language, it's like, I don't want to do this anymore. Uh, and then if a script takes more than two flags, as soon as I'm on my third flag, I've had to write more than two flags, then you're like, oh, you know what?

I should just write go or Python or something else. Oh, person J JQ is fine. Like I could ex ex, you know, exec out to jq. I can get whatever JSOI want. I'm probably better at parsing in Bash. But it was like not one of those things that came [00:58:00] willingly. It was like your senior engineers being like, we did it, we're doing everything this way.

And you're like, okay, fine. Like, and it came out better in the end, but like the whole time you were like, but why? Like, okay, now here's a question. Bash or PowerShell Bash. I mean, I don't really, I don't do Windows anymore, so I don't, like, I'm not doing PowerShell on, on Linux. It's just a four apartment. I really enjoy new Shell and you never check that we had them on the on ship it, um, a while ago.

And a lot of the things that I liked about PowerShell work in New Shell similarly, but it's, it's more Linux native. It is more of a, Hey, we know that external commands exist. Like PowerShell is like, everything has to be our verb noun, sort of, it's silver really learning WSL. PowerShell is like the, the or shell language for Java, right?

Like everything is like these long words of like, I don't want to do this. Oh my God, everything's an object. Oh my God, that's so true. Right? It's just like, it feels like Java, love Java. But sometimes [00:59:00] if Java were a she language, yeah, stop it. Exactly. Like it's like the Java rep, you know, whatever. But like new Shell has a lot of that stuff.

I've used it twice and I was like, let's never do this again. So Nelle is like, Kotlin is too Okay. But, okay. Okay. But do you know why? Okay. But real, like real talk though. Like I was so excited about Kotlin and I thought it was gonna be Java and Python having a baby, but now it's like this unstructured blob sometimes when it's a really big repository, like it's just so much and there's like not enough structuring to make it readable the way that I would like it to be.

You like separate files? All those in? No. Oh God. No. No. Don't say that. Um, but like. The, I guess the brackets in Java and the indent and python, it still gives you that space to know like, okay, this is a function in the way that you go down reading it. And Kotlin just gets very like busy. Interesting. When you're trying to go through a huge repository.

But it is very, it's really well made how they [01:00:00] inter, like how it hooks into Java, you know? Yeah. Okay. So the way that we've discussed with like the way that you have to teach and automation and like junior and senior engineers, how do you think interviewing needs a change to actually, like where do we need to evolve and interviewing to actually.

Ask people real questions about this type of skills because like, I feel like the interviews we give now are the reason why we end up with these Toxic three X engineers because they're memorizing some stupid lead code. Right. And that's the end of our show. Thank you everyone for joining. That's, I think that's a great question.

Um, you know what I mean? I have thoughts, I have thoughts like, how do we know somebody is like the empathetic teacher, senior engineer that's willing to grow from Elite Code or like go write us Instagram on a napkin. Like how much does that really tell you about somebody and how they're working? You know what I mean?

I, I agree. And, and I, I will say also, like I know you work at Microsoft, I don't think they interview [01:01:00] like this. Anymore. But I remember I interviewed as an intern for Microsoft back in the day in 2000 and they used to like ask these like brain teaser questions. They wanted to be Google and that was not my vibe.

And I remember, I think there was like, I hit even, even at like lunch, you, you'd like interview the entire day, even at lunch hour. I remember someone asking me whatever brain teaser question. I'm like, I just don't have the mental capacity for this now. Like I hate brain teaser questions. They make me nervous and they don't showcase me as a problem solver.

And I think, I think that's a thing that. Technical interviews make me nervous when, when someone is like, Hey, pair with blah, blah, blah person. Don't ambush me with like a pair programming challenge. First of all, I think pair programming is a very personal experience. You can't just pair with anybody.

There are certain people that you're very compatible with pairing on. Like for example, if I were to pair with someone and I've only paired [01:02:00] successfully with one person, I have to be on the driver's seat because I have a control issue. I also feel like there has to be a trust aspect there because there has to be a trust aspect being like nervous.

Yeah. I still think it's gotta be. Even when you're interviewing with people, right? Like there's gotta be a better way to showcase how engineering is a team sport. Like when you're working with somebody and you're both bringing ideas and somebody being able to listen to your ideas. Like you, like nobody wants to work with a jerk who's so supposedly technical but can't listen to ideas and can't like go back and forth and like, kind of like, have you ever seen two engineers battle it out and have like the craziest technical talk where you think they're gonna be mad at each other afterwards and be completely not settle on the best thing and then go to lunch together?

Like there is a special type of personality where you can have those deeply technical discussions and still be friends afterwards or still be kind afterwards and respect each other. And I feel like we've gotta do better finding that. And I don't know [01:03:00] if even like the, the technical, like the typical like, here's this.

Like Lee code problem, and we're gonna work it out together because there's no real, like, you're not really working those out together like that. You might be able to ask them for like a hint, but it's not the same thing. Like, how do you attest to see if this person works well in a team? Because that is one of the biggest parts of being an engineer.

How do you at test that? Like somebody can teach and, you know what I mean? Or be teachable or curious. Like I, I had an interview recently, which I quite liked, where I was asked to like present something, like present a strategy for something. And I like that because it was fun to like come up, like show like my thought process around, around the topic that I was asked to present on, but then get the feedback from the fellow team members.

And I think having like, that conversation, um, and, and sort of like building on each other's ideas, having that kind of structure was very, I thought for me was, [01:04:00] was very. Um, much conducive to my personality. I like, because I find like being asked to like code something on the spot, like, or, or being asked to do a take home coding project, like that shit stresses me out straight up.

Like I don't, and I, I, I consider myself a good developer, but I don't like those types of, those types of tests. But something where I get to showcase sort of like my thought process or like, ones that I really like is describe how you solved a problem. And I think I love this. Someone who has a cool problem that they solved and is enthusiastically describing how they solve the problem.

I think you can get their level of, of technical prowess, I think from how they, from that description of how they solve the problem. And you can, I think you can usually weed out the crappy people from the non crappy people because the, the, not the crappy people will, sorry, the non crappy people will give you that enthusiasm and, and, and will almost like overshare.

Like, oh, I tried this, then I tried this, then I tried this. [01:05:00] So. I feel like that, that's my thought. I don't know how, if you guys agree in interviewing, I feel like needs to be very specific to the levels that like where people are coming in, right? Like junior versus senior are very, should be di different interviews.

I, I actually really enjoyed the Amazon structure for interviewing internally where I, I don't like the leadership principles, but I liked that everyone had, when you were interviewing in the loop, you got two leadership principles that you were supposed to ask questions about. I like the structure. It gave you a lot of structure so that it was consistent, right?

Mm-hmm. It wasn't, I didn't, not necessarily say it was fair for everyone, but it was consistent for everyone. And so it did weed out people that didn't fit into that. But I liked going into an interview and saying, I only need to ask about these two leadership principles. Here's a bank of questions that are already pre-written that I can use or I can make one of my own based on one of these.

Yeah. And, and all I need to do is get my two answers from this thing on, on how I feel. I would rate them one to five in this specific thing, not how are they at? Uh, [01:06:00] all together, how are they? Because like, as you spread out, the more people that interview them, the more varied just opinions you're gonna get about like, oh, I thought they did a great job here.

And even I found that like my biases of like, oh, they answered this in a weird way that I think would impact that other leadership principle and a negative way. And then I talked to the person that had that leadership principle and like, oh, they did great. They answered this perfectly. And this like, oh, cool.

Like then my, I was wrong. Like whatever my assumption was based on what they were doing was wrong. Uh, but I do feel like the interviewing, especially as you get more senior, needs to slow down where there's, there's too many candidates and we're trying to weed through all of them, right? Like every job is getting every AI resume now.

And it's just like, I need to have an AI resume, read AI system reading the AI resumes so that we can just find the right ones. I'm like, that's not how this works. And yeah, I often find that just putting out smaller. Feelers into smaller networks of like, Hey, this is like, I know this space a little Well, that starts to lead like to [01:07:00] gatekeeping though.

Yes. And that is my problem. And that is where I think that you need to go outside of your comfort zone and outside the network to get really good people and good ideas in some fresh perspective on things. Yeah. And in those cases, I often feel like that companies need to go to more job fairs. Right, like especially in tech, like we just need to show up at a university or a conference.

A conference where the person is comfortable. Put your, you as the company should be uncomfortable going to the situation so someone else is comfortable and then say, Hey, I want to inter, like I just wanna ask you some questions and we wanna talk about this. And hey, if you're interested, I would like to spend a day with you.

And that sucks. 'cause it's like you can't do that for everyone and not everyone has a day. I have kids and I'm not gonna do that. I really hope that it does become more of a conversation though, because I think conversations are easier to have than like just trick questions. Like when, you know what's, like how you said, like when you know a structure and you know kind of what's expected of you, you can kind of meet that and it's not just your anxiety or nervousness and it's kind of gives you, it [01:08:00] gives you a kind of, uh.

Structure to shine in. Yeah. And as, as the interviewer, you want a logical conclusion. You want to boil the people down to numbers, and you say the highest number wins. Right? You're like, this is a hard decision about a person that I don't know, and I'm spending three hours with them, and then I'm gonna decide if I'm gonna spend, you know, pay them hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Like, that's a very like hard con conversation to have. So like, well, or were you a 10 or a five? Because if you're a six, then the seven's gonna win. Right? And like that's how it kind of boils down. And it sucks. Sucks. That's why I think you should set them up for success with at least knowing what's expected of them.

It's like, yeah. And I think that's really important. 'cause I did, I did an interview once where I spoke to the recruiter and they're like, oh yeah, the interview's like gonna be super conversational. You're gonna meet with the hiring manager, Lola. I show up for the interview. The hiring managers there, along with two developers.

Um, and then all of a sudden they're like, oh, and by the way, we expect that you'll be pair programming. I'm like, what the fuck? I wasn't mentally prepared for [01:09:00] this. Like, what's going on? And, and I, um, after the interview, I, I was like, so rattled. I, I, I emailed the recruiter and I said like, look, this is not cool.

I'm withdrawing my name from, from consideration because this is not what you promised me. Mm-hmm. And I was not prepared. And I feel Yeah, yeah. Like manage, manage people's expectations. Um, because I felt like I ended up not representing myself, um, to my fullest, to my fullest potential to, to these potential employers.

And that was really annoying. Um, the other thing that I wanna mention is I know like a lot of, a lot of organizations are, you know, have this like whole RTO thing, um, which I think is unfortunate that we're again, tying. Time people to like geographic locations because, um, during my stint at two cows, one of the things that I had to do was, um, I had to, like, I had to hire into both of my teams and I ended up with a really diverse team because we were accepting, uh, remote [01:10:00] applications.

So I not only had people here in Canada, but I also hired someone from Turkey and someone from Brazil. And I thought it was amazing because like, we had so many different, like, cultural perspectives, different experiences. One of the guys that I hired was an ic, but he was coming from management and he's like, I don't wanna do management.

I wanna focus on, on my tech skills and be an ic. But I could also rely on him for like, that empathy of like, he knows what it was like to be a manager. Um, so he can, you know, he in, in some ways he, he unofficially, um, I. Uh, without even knowing, I guess, um, knows how, knows how to like, deal with, with the ics who are, are, you know, a little less experienced, don't have that, that, uh, management perspective.

So having those perspectives was, was so cool. And, and I, I feel like we're, we lose a little bit of that when we're um, you know, so, so fixated on, on hiring for a specific geographic location. Geographic location. Yeah. It hurts your ability to hire the best people for that job. Yes, [01:11:00] yes. I mean, I would've missed out on these two amazing hires if I'd been just restricted to like North America.

So many companies are like, we hire the best people in Seattle. It also, it's, that's not how this works. It also is gonna get rid of so many people with disabilities and moms and military, like, you know what I mean? Like Yeah. It's just, it's gonna cut down the people that are. Able to just get into tech, but Yeah.

Yeah. I, I agree. Like, there's something to be said. You know, I, I have a friend who was working from home before it was even fashionable, and she said like, she worked, she, she looked for a company where she could work from home because that way she could be home when her kids arrived home from school at three 30.

And I'm like, damn, that's so nice. Like, meanwhile, you know, I had to spend like, um, I had to rush home from work at five o'clock and, and I, I lived like pretty close to the office, rush home at five o'clock to go pick up my daughter at school, at aftercare. And unfortunately she was like the last one left, you know?

And she's like, mom, I'm the only one here, [01:12:00] you know? And, and that mom guilt comes in to play and it, like, it's, it's stressful. It's horrible. There's no way I could do my job as a single mom if I couldn't rush and go get them from school. It would be like so much money in afterschool care. Like my kids would just, I'd never see them.

It's expensive. Yeah. Adriana, thank you so much for coming on this show. Where can people find you online? Um, so I can be found on LinkedIn and Twitter. Uh, sorry, not Twitter. Uh, LinkedIn and Blue Sky. Can you edit out that other part so I can be found on LinkedIn? I do, no. And Blue Sky. Alright. Um, LinkedIn, blue Sky and Mastodon.

Uh, my handle is Adriana m Vila, so it's A-D-R-I-A-N-A-M-V-I-V as in Victor, I-L-L-E-L-A on both Blue Sky and uh, Mastodon. So, um, yes, and we will have you in the, uh, for, to find out Blue Sky starter pack for guests. Uh, so if anyone wants to find you there, [01:13:00] you'll be yay in there. So thank you. Well, this was fun, you.

Yeah. Thank you everyone for listening and uh, we'll talk to you again soon.