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Brendan Montima is three weeks into the "My Tech Best Friend" ServiceNow bootcamp and is already showcasing great work. He's going to be a great addition to the ServiceNow world, and we got to interview him FIRST.
Authentic, Authoritative, Unapologetic ServiceNow commentary by Cory "CJ" Wesley and Robert "The Duke" Fedoruk
[00:00:00] Duke: All right. Today's episode is brought to you by two sponsors. First sponsor is clear. Corey, you know, I've said it once and I'll say it again. The awesome thing about clear sky is that it is a modern, ID management, ID governance and automation application. They've taken all the lessons that the industry , has learned, and they've put it into a brand new platform built right on service.
Now, how can you be.
[00:00:25] CJ: Do you cannot be. having Their platform on the platform.
[00:00:31] Duke: Their platform on the platform. I love that.
[00:00:34] CJ: absolutely. That's what it comes down to. Right? Like that unlocks all the value right there.
[00:00:38] Duke: So if you're at all interested in ID governance, , and automation, , or sponsors link, clear sky, they will be in the description below. the other sponsor is magic. And magic mind is kind of a, a nootropic, , tonic that I have been experimenting with. And, , you can find them at magic, mind dot C O, and unfortunately, Corey hasn't had the chance to try this wonderful plan, but let me tell you, like 3:00 PM on a Monday.
, and. I am just practically asleep. I have to like staple my eyelids to my forehead just to stay awake. but it's three 50 in the afternoon at the end of the week. And I am wired for sound, dude. You have no idea. I can't shut my eyelids.
[00:01:23] CJ: Do you smell? JAST.
[00:01:27] Duke: I love this stuff, man. So, magic mind if you, if you, if you ever find yourself at that 3:00 PM slump and you're like, oh God, like you're just barely conscious. You give this stuff a try. It is totally, totally annihilated. My 3:00 PM coma magic mind this magic mind.co link is going to be in a description below.
All right, Corey, what are we talking about?
[00:01:48] CJ: today we have as very special guests here. We're here with, , Brendan and I love when we talk about. Service now from this angle, right? Like we're going to talk about all things service now, but from the perspective of new someone new to the Eagles,
[00:02:00] Duke: So we have, brought on, , Brendan Montezuma and he is part of the, MTBF program. Is that right?
[00:02:08] Brendan: Yes.
[00:02:08] Duke: For me, three, four months ago, I had no idea what the MTBF thing was, but why don't you give a, give a description of that for, for those who don't know.
[00:02:18] Brendan: Um, I think my son is a tech camp, run by, um, Marian. And she is someone that, is an expert in, service now in all things niche, nice sharp way. And she runs into boot camp anywhere from three to five months, , and cost. Can I teach you a to Z how to get a role from service now all the way up to being an actual dev.
[00:02:45] Duke: Hm. And how many it is three months long. You said
[00:02:48] Brendan: the one that I'm in currently is a five.
[00:02:51] Duke: five months. what's the time commitment in there
[00:02:54] Brendan: it runs two nights a week for three hours each day. And then outside of that, it's, you know, doing a homework and doing it on self Sunday.
[00:03:01] Duke: and are you all the way through your program or. Oh, okay. So you're still used to why you're three weeks in dude. Corey.
[00:03:14] CJ: Yes.
[00:03:16] Duke: Okay. So, for those of you who don't know, Corey and I, , found Brendan on Twitter because he was showing off this capstone project. Uh, the capsule is probably the wrong word. Now that I know that you're only three weeks in, but you were showcasing this project that you were working on to make it feel a little bit more like real life. And Corey and I were amazed at this because it was like every day we get this question, show me the path, show me how to do service. Now, show me, you know, give me all the materials. I need to learn service now, what do I do next? How do I become good at service now? And I feel like we beat a dead horse.
Don't we Corey like build something, build something, build something, build something. I feel like tattooing it across my forehead.
[00:04:00] CJ: Maybe it's the old school in us, right. Duke,
[00:04:02] Duke: Maybe
[00:04:04] CJ: you know, we, we all learn coming up right. Just by doing it. I mean, the service now community has always been great and the Wiki was always the guiding light. Right. But the way that you actually back in the day, the way that you got through and learn service now was by doing service now.
and I think, There's a lot less of , that grunt work that I see, , day in and day out, you know, when folks who are new to the industry kind of come into it, they want the happy path. And for those who don't know what the happy path is, is basically when you're building a product.
Right. And when you don't test it, how anything else goes wrong? Right. It's like basically a, B, C, D, and it's always going to work ABCD. Well, that never happens. Right. And so that's what we always say, build something, right. Because. When you build something, you get not only the happy path, but you get all of those alleys, you get everything that comes along with that.
And when you finally do reach your destination, you're a much better, asset, and your experience as much better in that product than it would be otherwise.
[00:04:57] Duke: yeah. Everybody wants to jacked and ripped body. Right. But, but how do you get you? Don't get that by sitting on the couch.
[00:05:04] CJ: Man,
[00:05:04] Duke: know, you don't get eat that by eating the cheesies that's right.
Oh man, we're going to be in so much trouble. If we go down that path anyways, w w I'm gonna put the link to Brendan's post in the description. So be sure to check it out, but Brendan, please tell us about Starbucks management.
[00:05:24] Brendan: Yeah, sure. , so honestly it's a, a assignment I'm still working on, and I'm going to innovate over it throughout the duration of the program and add more functionality to it. And so, that first person that you saw was strictly like, , To some admin. And so I'd gone through, and I just made a Starbucks drink platform, through the eyes of a yet.
[00:05:45] CJ: Eyes. And, And what do you mean by that?
[00:05:49] Brendan: I guess admin is essentially with just. Being able to do all the use cases a SIS admin would have on the job and, um, everything from adding roles, adding users, adding groups, , all the way up until, implementing a slack integration as well.
[00:06:08] CJ: Oh, nice.
[00:06:09] Brendan: Yeah.
[00:06:09] CJ: Nice, nice, nice
[00:06:11] Brendan: Jeff last night.
[00:06:13] CJ: sweet number. Who is still haven't done. and they've been in the, um, in the ecosystem for years at this point.
[00:06:19] Duke: Yeah. One of them runs a podcast too.
[00:06:28] CJ: Who's going to call you by name duke. No man. So you you're, you're ahead of the game here, Brandon, and what I, what I like about what you're doing here and, and hopefully that's a representation of, your like get up and go, but also of the program as well, is that, like bootcamps when I was coming up, back in the, like the windows NT days, MCSC, they had a pretty bad rap at a certain point, right?
As they, as like brain dump central, you kind of went in and you paid an obscene amount of money. And they gave you cheat sheets that would help you get through the, um, the exam and get your certification. Uh, it sounds like what you're doing right now is like the real deal like, let's actually get in here and, throw a whole bunch of information at you, but useful information that once you're done it, once it, once, once it's integrated into your, like your soul, you'll come out of this with actual skills.
[00:07:21] Brendan: I think that's a big reason of why. I am actually doing things that I've been doing on the job itself.
[00:07:28] Duke: I love how you were thinking ahead in terms of what would be the things that I would be doing and let me build into those. But where did you even get that list from? did it all come from your imagination and what you've seen or did somebody like help you understand the administrative.
Components beforehand.
[00:07:47] Brendan: that list came from, the bootcamp. it was a long, uh, assignment and there's only two parts to it then abouts and, um, you know, kinda going through that lesson. getting that, that lens of a CIS admin of a Deb and so on and so forth.
[00:08:04] CJ: From your experience being early on, tell me how much you like the service now platform. Is this something that, that you look at and you think, wow, this is pretty cool.
Or is this something that you're looking at as, wow, I love new tech or is this something that you're looking at where like the market is good and, and we're, and I'm going all in or it's like a combination or if it's something else I'll also.
[00:08:27] Brendan: I think it's, all three, to be honest. yes, the
and then the, the product itself and the platform is great to learn on, with now learning with the doc site. Like it's very bad. Easy to learn. So now if you go through the different, doc, if you go through the non learning and if you, just apply yourself and try, and build new things, you know, so it was not, I think it is something that is very much here to stay and grow it and take over the marketplace.
[00:09:03] Duke: I do want to actually jump in there, , because one thing I've learned about you in the short time, I've known you is that you are a man of many talents, and there are many texts that you have, engaged in. And I want to know, cause like I've basically been solely focused on service now for very, very long.
Let's say. How does it compare against other technologies in terms of availability of learning resources?
[00:09:29] Brendan: and so, I done it all in terms of, trying to get myself into tech, and service now has been the easiest way. I've been able to kind of consume new product and understand it.
[00:09:41] Duke: I feel like Corey service now should pay us for,
[00:09:48] CJ: and, and the best platform ever award goes to?
[00:09:53] Duke: we can't get better marketing than this. Come on. All right. Sorry about that, Brandon
[00:09:59] Brendan: That's fine.
[00:09:59] Duke: and other thing, oh, sorry. Go ahead.
[00:10:01] CJ: no, no. Go ahead. Do.
[00:10:03] Duke: Uh, of the things that you've learned so far, which, things have resonated with you the most.
[00:10:07] Brendan: So with me, it's really been about the item and not, I think those two spaces are aligned to. my, my better, because of my interest in, web three and where all that will just go in. And I think, uh, you know, being on the psychology side of things within service now we'll only, one give me job security and to grow and expand to new and creative things in the future.
[00:10:33] CJ: Yeah. So that's a great thing. the expansion part of it, what I've learned or what I've experienced, by being inside of the service now ecosystem from the very beginning until now, is that the expansion part of it is real.
The service now, ecosystem is not a place where you can come and it will pigeonhole you into just kind of like one area or one, thing like, like as you get into it and you look around, right, and you get a nice comfy seat, like you can figure out, like, there are so many things.
Ways that you can combine that skillset, what other things out there and it, and, business process and, and what have you, and really find so many different and cool niches that you can dive into and really get a whole lot of value out of like your skillset and your interests and just kind of putting it out there too, for any clients or, or employers that you end up with.
It's just been so cool. I didn't really have a question in there.
[00:11:35] Duke: Sometimes it's just about the flex. None of them.
[00:11:40] CJ: You know what man? I mean, it's just, like you said, we should be getting sponsored for this, but
[00:11:45] Duke: Yeah.
[00:11:46] CJ: You know, when I think about my experience early, but yeah, I could never convince anyone when I was still working a day job. Right. I can never convince anyone that service now was the future.
Like I hadn't met you do way back. And you, and I would riff whenever we see each other in person, and I'd always walk away from those events. Like, man, this thing is tough, right? Like I'd just height. . And I'd go back to my job and try to convince like my other it compatriots. I'm like man service.
Now, dude, this is the future. Like you got to get in. Let me get you in on this. and nobody, nobody was biting. You're like, no, man, you know, and write some power script and no, man, you know, I'm going to do this. You know, nobody was as excited about it as it was. And you know, Fast forward.
They're all wrong. So, yeah, I mean, this is, this is great. I, I love getting your perspective here though. Brendan, on the coming in on the, on the ground floor. tell me what it's like to put in that the amount of time that's necessary to really learn platform and really be able to demonstrate your ability to have learned a platform through the exercises that.
[00:12:59] Brendan: Honestly.
Who are going through the fattest together and, we kind of brought down community, , and it's been one way where, you know, helping each other, figure this all out. because again, there's no better teacher than actually doing it. Right. And so, that's been. So far.
[00:13:20] Duke: testify on that brother. And I'll reiterate on the daily people get asked Corey and I they imagined this golden path that is somewhere in a document. Right? Send us the document, send me the steps. And it's like, the steps are in front of you already. You have like, if you know how this works, there's the steps go build something, you know, you don't even have to be employed by somebody in beyond somebody special project.
You can just like, Just build something there. As a matter of fact, there was somebody that I was helping, she wanted to get into the service now ecosystem. her late husband had worked in the service now ecosystem and he had passed away and she wanted to kind of like do this to get close to him.
But she had been a homemaker for him for like, a decade and a half, two decades. And, she once said like, well, what do I know about. How this stuff works and I'm like, build an app in service. Now that a homemaker would appreciate. how do you manage a household?
What's all the work that goes into that. How does that work work? Oh, you got kids. That means you got chores. Well chores or tasks, aren't they? Yeah, but they're a weird tasks because if you don't do them, they kind of expire. And then the next week they reappear. It's like the same work, but a different task every week.
So just like really cool ways of looking at work in something that most people, ignorant as they are, wouldn't even think twice about yet. She could build this super compelling app and workflow, that would bring nuance and new ideas to all the rest of us. And it's, everybody's got something like that.
if I was out of work and I needed practice, I love to soap. So I'd love to do something where I'm like, I dunno, controlling all the inventory for, all my raw ingredients that I do to make soap. It's just, everybody's got something that they can apply to the platform. It's really just a platform for work.
Right. So build something that manages some kind of work. I totally went on a rant there, Cory of, sorry.
[00:15:21] CJ: I get it right? Like it's easy when it comes to the service now platform. Right. They get excited. and then, you know, especially that when you got. That one and to recount the details of, someone who, lost someone special to them and, wanted to retroactively like be involved with they were, were involved that wit right.
And just to feel closer and then to learn that, that service now and learn how that person has, evolved throughout the ecosystem is just amazing. So Yeah.
no, no apologies needed on that. Right, dude. pivoting, from there, Brenda, would I like to ask is where do you see yourself when you finish up the bootcamp, , are you looking to take this experience and go into service now as an architect, as a developer? what part of the ecosystem do you think fits you personally? And what, what, what interests you? The.
[00:16:07] Brendan: I think for me, I'm definitely a BA so dev, , I've, done some dev work in the past. And, um, I would love to actually mix the two skills together with service now and obviously my past work. , and then from there, we'll kind of see where the work takes me.
[00:16:22] CJ: So what w so speaking of that, like instructions to technology, what was your catalyst? . To get involved in technology as well,
[00:16:29] Brendan: Um, well, I was in Mexico actually with, , my, nonprofit. And so we decided the one year two. Bring computers down to these, uh, schools , in Mexico. And, seeing these, these, you know, they were ever from sixth grade to 12th grade, , the students use the internet for the first time, was on inspiring.
and that threw a light bulb in my head to say, tech is. Really forever reaching, you know? And so I was like, I somehow want to get into the space, mind you, I'm in high school, not really knowing what I'm going to do for life. didn't go into tech right away. but eventually, made my way, to tech.
[00:17:12] Duke: Do you have any questions for us
[00:17:14] Brendan: I guess what's a common meal, meth or misconception in the service.
[00:17:20] Duke: Oh, jeepers whole episode there. Surprised we haven't done that episode.
[00:17:25] CJ: I liked that. I liked that as an episode. who we'll give you, we'll give you some credit in the credits on that one. Brendan, when we do it,
[00:17:36] Duke: You want to, going to take.
[00:17:39] CJ: for it.
[00:17:40] Duke: Okay, massive misconception about the, um, it's not as big a misconception now as it was for the first, like 10, 15 years, but the whole like, oh, it's an it ticketing tool and that's all it is
[00:17:52] CJ: Yes.
[00:17:53] Duke: , I feel like it. Like even service now has had to reteach itself and recenter itself on this.
I like to pretend that I always saw it. Like as soon as I first got my hands on service, now I was like, this is going to change everything. like our first project was rolling it out for, new hires and terminations, And bringing the whole rest of the business into that, work tracking, work, visibility, work governance paradigm, and everybody outside.
It is like, what's this tickets and shit. This is awesome. You know? and they had nothing to compare it to. It was like literally they were running their lives out of email, in their memory. Um, so,
[00:18:41] CJ: I'm writing that down.
[00:18:46] Duke: Yeah. And so whenever I heard people say, oh yeah, , that it ticketing tools like, yeah. It's awesome. It is way ahead of you now. How do you feel, you know what I mean? Go ahead and manage the risk on that $2 billion pipeline without a ticketing tool. Um, yeah, somehow they do. Maybe that's why it cost so much money.
So. I think that's the biggest misconception is that it's just in the same class of ticketing tools of the things that came before it. I mean, there's some other people having a wider lens now, but service now led the way on that wider lens. I think anybody who denigrate service now, like that just doesn't understand the importance of some work and how few other options there are.
That's my answer.
[00:19:30] CJ: it. I love it. Especially the part about running the lives out of emails and the memory, God that hit home. Uh, so my take on this would be that you don't need to know how to code, to build a good solution. Um, I think a lot of folks, look at the problem, see the see problems.
And so basically I think when, when you're a hammer, everything's a nail. And so, um, when you come to the service now, , ecosystem and you're a developer than everything is a code problem, but not everything is a cold problem. So now it's done really good work around making things, , low code and a lot of places.
And sometimes that's all you need and even more, sometimes that's the required. depending on the client, depending on who's going to maintain the solution after you leave. Right. And so not, not everything's a nail. even though I think a lot of folks, look at service now and think that, you know, everything's a code problem.
Like it is not, sometimes it's actually not even the service now problem. Sometimes it's a people problem on the client side that you got to solve, you know, You know? Yeah. So just, before you start solving those problems, take a step back , and just figure out what's the proper tool, because it's not always code.
[00:20:40] Duke: Yeah, especially now with flow designer. I mean, I got that series on YouTube now, to toot my own horn. Um, but then put the, go with the flow. And in some cases it's even, it's sometimes even better than. in terms of the amount of people that can wield it, but also in terms of like, it just takes out so much of that, you know, even really good programmers have syntax errors and all this stuff.
And it's just like, well, instead of writing, if then, blah, blah, blah, let's just put the, if thing in there.
[00:21:06] CJ: Yeah.
Don't write the, if clause is grabbing and dragging and drop it, a
[00:21:12] Duke: a building layer on top, I guess it could be code underneath, but the building layer now in flow designer is so good, so, so good.
[00:21:19] CJ: Yeah, I think they did a really good job with those tools and they have always done a really good. job with those tools. and dependent on the part of the system that I'm using will often depend on whether or not I decided I should drop to the coat layer or if I should drag and drop it because sometimes dragging and drop it in is better.
And I cannot wait for this catalog builder thing to be. my fricking God. have you seen it though?
[00:21:46] Duke: I have seen the catalog builder. I love it because oh man. Like I, I earned my bones on that. Rearchitecture for the, hospitality industry I was in. And we basically put ourselves on the hook to rebuild like 150 some catalog items in the rearchitecture. And, we were sitting there an Excel sheet to track all the requirements and I would've loved to have handed them something.
That's just, just enter it into here, And that catalog builder has a tone of promise. It is useful in some ways, the way it is, but as that thing gets polished and polished, and then it's going to get to a point where nobody even believes it was that bad beforehand. Right.
[00:22:24] CJ: That's always the case, Right.
Click wait.
[00:22:29] Duke: Yeah, kind of like execution plans back in the day.
[00:22:33] CJ: Oh God.
[00:22:34] Duke: you there for execution plans?
[00:22:36] CJ: It meant, uh, I started at, when they were being phased out.
[00:22:39] Duke: Okay. So Brendan, before flow designer, there was legacy workflow. And before legacy workflow, there was these things called execution plans, which is like building a workflow out. But record by record, there was no interface for it. It was just like the transition from one node to another. It was a record in a table that you wrote out as a record.
[00:23:00] Brendan: Oh, wow.
[00:23:02] Duke: Yeah. we tried doing an onboarding process on it, but like are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of records built and we're just, and you can't see it, you can't see the flow.
[00:23:10] CJ: Yeah.
[00:23:11] Duke: , and so then we got legacy flow designer and that was totally rad, but nobody believes how bad it was. We had execution plans and nobody also believes that that was a step up to what we had before, which was.
[00:23:24] Brendan: That's fine.
[00:23:31] CJ: Yeah, the, the platform has definitely evolved over time and, and has gotten better and, and any objective measure. , Yeah. I, I really like it. , so Brendan, I'd say six months from now, I imagine, you'll probably be one of the folks who will be saying something similar to what duke and are saying, like, this is fricking cool,
[00:23:49] Brendan: Yeah.
[00:23:50] CJ: It's one of those things that as you start to dive into the abyss, right? Like instead of getting frightened by a Jew, you embrace it. And then, you know, you realize what you thought was dark. Wasn't really dark and you come out the other side and you're like a changed person.
That's the design. That's what the service now experience has been . I was a bit scared when I dove into it because I wasn't a coder. . And I felt like you had to code in order to do it. And I did learn, learn JavaScript because of a service now. , and so now I'm fairly proficient with it, but you know, I also try to find all of them, all the reasons not to use it.
[00:24:23] Brendan: good to hear, I guess I won't be looking for a comma. No, all day long.
[00:24:30] CJ: Oh, you might still do that.
[00:24:35] Brendan: Well,
[00:24:37] CJ: Yeah. You might still run across like worst that fricking semi-colon, but yeah. I mean, for the most part, it's pretty awesome. So the combination of the bootcamp that you're in the MiTek best friend bootcamp, , Brendan I assume we'll have to deliver like some sort of capstone project that's duke kind of alluded to, early on.
do you have any idea what that is and, and, are you already starting to think through like how you're going to build that?
[00:25:00] Brendan: I'm not sure what it is exactly yet, but from mine, it'll probably have to do, , in some way, either web three or something, uh, just cause, um, my inter really do lie in there. And then, I would love to mingle in the security component of things as well. so it's in my head.
It's, very daunting. , but I'm really hoping that, by the end of the bed, I'll be in good shape to make what's in my head. Oh yeah.
[00:25:27] Duke: Oh man. Well, you're you're way ahead of a lot of folks, buddy. I'll tell you that. it's a good place to break it off. Hey, Corey.
[00:25:32] CJ: Yeah, I think so I'll do Brendan. It was great. Having you on the show really, really loved your fresh perspective on service. Now loved love what you're doing with it. What I've seen from you on Twitter. Really hoping that you're going to stick with this program and you're going to come out the other side and be a freshly minted, ServiceNow developer in our ecosystem and, and looking forward to see all the good things that you contribute in a.
[00:25:54] Brendan: Thank you guys so much. We appreciate that.
[00:25:57] Duke: Yeah, no problem. Bye. Thanks for being our guest and ladies and gentlemen, there is going to be a ton of links in the description below. Be sure to check that before you a bit us to do, and we will see you on the next one.
[00:26:07] CJ: Bye-bye.