Will_Button:
What's going on, everybody? Welcome to another episode of Adventures in DevOps. Joining me in the studio today, live from, where are you at, Jillian?
Jillian_Rowe:
I am in Doha, Qatar now, where the World Cup is currently being hosted. But in like another week or two, that won't be true anymore. So I don't I don't I don't really know if you want to be saying my location. Like just flip a coin, flip a coin. I'll be somewhere.
Will_Button:
Alright, cool. For some reason I was going to say Dubai, but I knew that wasn't right, but it did start with a D, so I was close.
Jillian_Rowe:
There you go, same region, same geographic region
Will_Button:
Yeah, it's close.
Jillian_Rowe:
too.
Will_Button:
It's close. And we also have Jonathan Hall. What's up, Jonathan?
Jonathan_Hall:
Hey hey!
Will_Button:
live from Amsterdam or close.
Jonathan_Hall:
Yes I am.
Will_Button:
And yeah, I'm Will Button. So today we are gonna talk about. It's a topic that was triggered by a video I recently released on hashtag shameless self-promotion, the DevOps for Developers YouTube channel. And the title of the video was, Don't Do DevOps. And what I talked about in that video is not really pinning yourself or your professional identity to a specific technology like. becoming known as the Kubernetes expert or the Jenkins expert or the Docker guru. And there are a couple of thoughts behind that. One being that, you know, these technologies we use today, even though they're super cool and popular, they're not always going to be that way. And so by tying your professional identity to something like Kubernetes eventually we'll reach a point where people aren't using Kubernetes anymore. but you could pin your reputation as being like the Kubernetes expert. And so as that transition starts to happen, you're going to start to see less and less opportunities coming your way because people identify you as the Kubernetes expert and say, Oh, well, we can't use that person for, you know, whatever the new technology of the week is, they're the Kubernetes guru. And then the other side of that equation is a lot of employers and clients that you work with. may not know that they have a Kubernetes problem or a Jenkins problem or an AWS problem. So by pinning your professional reputation on specific technology, you automatically filter out people who may be good employers or clients for you that simply don't know that you have the skills that they need. So my recommendation in the video was to focus on solving business problems rather than technology expertise. So that's the topic for today.
Jillian_Rowe:
Cool, well I think that's, yeah, that was a really good summary. And I think one of the reasons why that struck me as sort of an interesting conversation, because I think the three of us included and everybody else that I've met who does DevOps, it's kind of something we all fell into, I think, or at least that's true for me and for a lot of the people that I know. And we all have some sort of adjacent skillset, right? It's like I do data science. Jonathan, I think you do like a lot of agile and will you do like at least like some node and go and if I'm getting this wrong, you know, just interrupt and say. But we all have something else that we do, and then we apply DevOps to solve problems in that space. So I think yes and no, that's good advice. I'm not really that sure what the alternative is, because usually, for example, if you're submitting a resume someplace, they're always looking for some kind of buzzwords. And they're usually looking for a specific stack of technology. And if you don't have that listed someplace, and you're too general, I'm not sure that you're even gonna get your foot in the door. But then at the same time, I do see that where it's like, well, you don't wanna be locked into a specific technology stack either. So how do you think you should balance those two?
Will_Button:
For me, I think it's kind of like a, it's almost a game you have to play. You know, when you're doing the resume thing, you certainly want the technology skills listed on your resume. And the way that I do it is there's just a section on my resume that just says technology skills and it lists all the buzzwords. But it's a pretty small part of my resume. Most of my resume is. focused on problems that I've solved and the benefits of solving those problems. But you do have to have, you're right, you do have to have a certain number of buzzwords on your resume if that's the route you're going just to make it through the hiring manager or the screeners or if they use an automated system, you know, the keyword matcher. I think more generally though, non-resume type environments where you're like, you know, talking on Twitter or with your friends or, you know, at meetups or whatever, you know, focusing there on like the things you actually do, not the tools that you actually use. Like if you're talking to a car mechanic, you know, they're probably going to tell you about the things that they do to cars rather than saying, oh yeah. I'm a 916's impact wrench guy. Love that thing.
Jillian_Rowe:
That reference was right over my head, but I'm gonna assume that it follows.
Will_Button:
Hahahaha
Jillian_Rowe:
This is why I don't have a car, you guys. I get ripped off whenever I have to go get it fixed. Yeah, I think if you're submitting resumes, I can see that, because that's not a good way to be getting a job, right? Like if you're stuck in submitting the resume game, you have to submit hundreds of, possibly even thousands, or post it to Indeed, or something like that. So I think that's all good things.
Will_Button:
sure. What
Jonathan_Hall:
So I have maybe a slightly nuanced view on this.
Will_Button:
do you think Jonathan?
Jonathan_Hall:
I'm gonna play the devil's advocate for a moment if that's all right.
Will_Button:
Oh,
Jonathan_Hall:
I mean, I actually more or less agree with you,
Will_Button:
absolutely.
Jonathan_Hall:
but I do think that there's room for someone to, if they choose and they do this, do so with open eyes to become an expert in some specific field. I shouldn't say field, but a specific technology. If you wanna be the Kubernetes guy, for example, or, you know, pick your poison, terraform or. react or whatever, right? That can be very lucrative and it can, it's one way to get to the top of your game quickly, potentially, especially if you get in on the ground level of a new technology. It's a little bit late for Kubernetes in that field right now, but maybe, I don't know what the new big thing is, but if you can be an early adopter and get in on the ground floor, you can have some great success, especially if your goal is publicity. If you want to write a book. or become a speaker or get hired as a consultant who really knows that area. You can have a lot of success in that for a time. And this goes back into your point.
Will_Button:
right?
Jonathan_Hall:
I mean, look at the early adopter, I'll use Go as an example. Look at the early adopters of Go. Let's use Dave Cheney as an example. He's a fairly well-known Go developer. And he made a lot of money. I assume, I don't know how much money he made. We never talked about it, but he did courses and conference speaking and. and workshops and blog a lot. And I assume that he made a reasonable amount of money doing that. That market's kind of flooded now. There's a lot of people doing go stuff. And it's gonna continue to get more flooded. And I don't think he's doing that level of work anymore. I don't know the reasons. I don't know that it's because he didn't like competition. I don't think that's the reason. I just think he's moved on. But if you can get in on the ground floor of a new technology and be sort of an early mover, you definitely have... room to be very lucrative, to have a lucrative career in that area. But like I said, your eyes need to be open and this goes into what you were saying. It's not, uh, it's not a forever sort of thing. Uh, in most cases, you know, if you're lucky and the thing you choose is say JavaScript that's still being used, what, 25 years later? Um, and if you're a JavaScript expert, maybe, you know, maybe you can do that.
Will_Button:
Hey.
Jonathan_Hall:
Although there's, there's thousands of JavaScript experts now. So, you know, it's, it's the competition is harder.
Jillian_Rowe:
The Pearl Doves are all like crying now. They're just crying
Jonathan_Hall:
Yeah, in Pearl Devs, you have to pay somebody
Jillian_Rowe:
into the podcast
Will_Button:
Okay.
Jillian_Rowe:
feed.
Jonathan_Hall:
to admit that they even know Pearl anymore.
Will_Button:
Yeah
Jonathan_Hall:
So yeah, I mean, if that's the route you wanna go, I think it's fine, but you need to go into it with your eyes wide open, understand that it's probably a temporary thing. And then when you're done riding that wave, you either need to pick something new, a new technology, or change your approach entirely.
Jillian_Rowe:
I would say that's true of, you know, kind of like any career in tech, whether you're doing like DevOps or software engineering or what have you, you always need to be keeping up on like what's the current new hotness? Is this programming language like, oh, like listen, Pearl, I love you, but, you know, I don't use Pearl anymore. It's not something that I typically list on my resume. I suppose you could Google me and find like some Pearl modules and things that I've written, but it's, you know, I don't exactly advertise it anymore. And I stopped doing that because... you know, every few months I'll go look at job postings and things like that in my field. And I was like, well, what are they looking for? And they started to look for just basically Python and Python started to kind of take the place, you know, that Pearl had 15, 20 years ago when we were sequencing the human genome project and all that kind of thing. So, I mean, I would say that's true of like any kind of career in tech. You need to... You know, you need to be aware of what's happening around you. You need to know like, okay, what's the current hotness? And sometimes, sometimes you might pick something that's really long lasting. So for example, I picked HPC high performance computing is kind of my wheelhouse. And that's been around for quite a while. And I think we'll continue to be around for quite a while, but there are other sort of tech stacks, um, you know, in programming languages or frameworks or things that I've chosen that have not been anywhere near as long lived as that. So, you know, you gotta, you gotta pick and choose. and stay aware.
Will_Button:
Yeah, I think to build on that, one of the things I'm realizing is my, I quite possibly had an unintended or unspecified audience when I created that video of people who are just getting started into tech, you know, because like for each of us we have things that were stronger in than other things But I think I think we've developed that expertise in certain areas based on the broad foundational skills that we had and then we just worked our way through our career and saw a need and tech, you probably don't have the experience or the foundational skills to understand what the whether a new tech is worth grabbing on to and trying to become the expert in it or not. You know like if you think back like the people who invented Kubernetes, they weren't Kubernetes experts and then invented Kubernetes. They had other areas in life, you know, they had other things that they were doing and they identified this problem and created Kubernetes to solve that problem. So it's like they gravitated to an area of expertise from a more broader discipline.
Jillian_Rowe:
Exactly. I think that's kind of the story of any tech career, right? How long do any of these things really last? Kubernetes has lasted for quite a while.
Will_Button:
Kind of like being a hair metal rock star in the 80s. Thought it was gonna go forever and then Nirvana drops one damn song and you're like, dang, that was my whole career gone.
Jonathan_Hall:
Ha ha ha.
Jillian_Rowe:
Time to jump ship then.
Will_Button:
Right? But you have to be old enough to understand hair metal and nirvana to find that joke funny. So I probably just alienated like half of our listeners.
Jonathan_Hall:
Ha ha ha!
Will_Button:
So I'm just
Jonathan_Hall:
I think it could be useful to talk about what Jonathan Stark calls, I think, two dimensions
Will_Button:
gonna go yell at people and tell them to get off my lawn.
Jonathan_Hall:
of specialization. Because I think you touched on the topic in your intro there, Will. And so we've been talking about technical specialization, specializing on a particular technology. And I think your broader point is that that's kind of a dangerous route to go, especially if you're early in your career. And I agree with that. Um, well, there are other ways you can specialize, uh, and, and you kind of alluded to this, that, uh, you could specialize in, uh, a sort of a problem domain or a business area. Uh, and I think that's something that's, that's useful. Um, although if you're early in your career, it's probably premature to do that. Uh, but you can certainly be thinking about it, uh, about your career with this in mind. Um, you know, and, and, you know, at a really high level, uh, one way to think about this is like, I specialize in FinTech or I specialize in blockchain, or I specialize in med tech, or I specialize in e-commerce, you know, th these sorts of industries. Um, you know, and when you're early on, that's probably fine. Probably you're, you just find a job and it happens to be in one of those random fields and that's fine. Uh, if you enjoy that field though, then when you're ready for your next career move, you can obviously look for other roles in the same field. If you don't like it, you can look for roles in another field. But where this might potentially lead is that you become a guy with fintech expertise or medtech expertise or data science expertise or whatever. And then you can start to niche down is what Jonathan Stark calls it. So rather than being the Ruby guy, you could be the guy who helps e-commerce. platforms increase their conversions from the checkout page, or something, a very specific type of business-related problem. So that's another area you can go, and that's usually easier to market, especially if you wanna ever become a freelance or consultant-type person. Most companies aren't looking for a Ruby expert. but they will know if they need to solve a problem with their landing or their checkout page conversion problem or whatever, right? So if you have a specific business problem in mind, it's often easier to market that. And you'll see that on CVs or on job descriptions as well, you know, we're looking for somebody with at least X number of years experience in the fintech industry, or you'll see that more often when you're looking, when they're looking for team leads or engineering managers. But that's something to keep in mind too. You can specialize in your sort of business or problem domain rather than on the technology stack you're using. Looks like we lost Will. Hopefully he'll be able to join us again before the show's over.
Jillian_Rowe:
Yeah, I'm not sure how we'll stop the recording without him, but
Jonathan_Hall:
Oh.
Jillian_Rowe:
I guess, I don't know, I guess we'll just keep going. Yeah, but we were talking about having a business problem that you focus on. I think that's really important because I know that was a conundrum for me, especially a few years ago before the term DevOps was like as widely known for the most part. You know, I work with scientists, they didn't know the term DevOps, they didn't know it was a thing. I would say now most of them know, like I could say, oh, I do DevOps and they're like, oh yeah, okay. Like we have a general idea of what you do. You bang around on the AWS console and I'm like, yeah, exactly, that's it. So that's, you know, so that, so over time, I think new terms kind of get put out into the, I don't know, common tongue, the vernacular, that kind of thing. So you can consider that to happen, but initially, especially if you are on a really new technology stack or set, probably the people who are interested in hiring you for that. have a problem they need solved and don't necessarily care about the technology itself. Unless you're specifically working to develop that technology, it's very likely you're going to have to pivot what you do to address the needs of the people who want to hire you. I will.
Jonathan_Hall:
Yes, and Will's back.
Will_Button:
I'm back. I am. I am. I was doing a recording so I actually have no idea what's going to happen to our recording.
Jillian_Rowe:
Well.
Jonathan_Hall:
Do you still see the record button?
Jillian_Rowe:
It says recording on mine.
Will_Button:
Yeah,
Jonathan_Hall:
Yeah, mine too.
Will_Button:
I do. I left the other cab open. I just left the call and I see the audio files over there. So I think we've got everything.
Jonathan_Hall:
Let's hope so.
Will_Button:
Yeah.
Jillian_Rowe:
Well, that's good.
Will_Button:
So on that note, I will not be pinning my professional career on the Riverside podcast host expert.
Jillian_Rowe:
Ha ha! Oh, that's
Will_Button:
I
Jillian_Rowe:
gonna
Will_Button:
had
Jillian_Rowe:
be
Will_Button:
one
Jillian_Rowe:
like,
Will_Button:
thing.
Jillian_Rowe:
we hope this guy doesn't listen to the show and it's like, well.
Will_Button:
Right.
Jillian_Rowe:
Let me insert some chaos monkeys in there.
Will_Button:
Yeah, gosh, I hope your trash talking doesn't affect your future recordings.
Jillian_Rowe:
Oh no! That would be so tragic. set up like one of those like birds that like just presses a button. Anyway, so I wanted to play devil's advocate for a minute where over time I've kind of specialized more and more and more and that's because you know like I'm older and I'm more tired and I'm not like 25 and willing to work 50 hours, you know a week to be learning like whatever new tech stack whatever the new current hotness is that I might have been a lot more willing to do you know like earlier in my career when I was younger and more energetic and all that kind of thing. So over time, I've kind of specialized more and more and more. And I see that that's kind of a blessing and a curse. So for example, I was on one project where we had to kind of, it was a last minute decision to spin up a Kubernetes cluster. And I was able to figure it out very quickly because I've been doing HPC for so many years. And a cluster is a cluster, you guys, OK? They're not. It's not that deep. They're not that different. All right, you got your nodes, you have them in a network setting and you have some shared storage or whatever. And that was that. But I remember like one of the people on the project saying, Oh, I was really worried about this because we didn't think that you knew Kubernetes. I was just, you know, and then I told them, I gave them my clusters, a cluster spiel, and apparently that was all fine. Um, but I also think it made them have a little bit more like faith in my adaptability too, that they were like, Oh, this person really knows the fundamentals very well and can. and can switch technology stacks as needed. So what do you guys think about that? Cause you can't keep up with everything. There's too many things, like even within DevOps, right? I don't know everything within DevOps. There are just
Jonathan_Hall:
What?
Jillian_Rowe:
way too many things.
Jonathan_Hall:
How did you get on this show
Jillian_Rowe:
I don't even know the different cloud
Jonathan_Hall:
if you don't know everything about DevOps?
Jillian_Rowe:
providers.
Will_Button:
I'll delete that
Jillian_Rowe:
I know
Will_Button:
part of the recording.
Jillian_Rowe:
that's it. You guys are just gonna have to kick me off now. I know I've outed myself. Was I supposed to be
Will_Button:
No,
Jillian_Rowe:
making that claim?
Will_Button:
I actually agree with you. No, I agree with you from the perspective of like, so as you got more mature in your career, you had your own network, you had a foundation of people that would work with you. And so I think the specialization, your network of, your funnel of money that funds your career, guided you to specialization versus you saying, I'm gonna specialize in this. So you were reacting to the environment rather than putting the environment up and saying, this is what I will react to. And, but at the same time, you know, you started with that broad foundation of skills. So when something new came up, you're like, oh yeah, this is just like the other thing. And I think that's one of the reasons why. I made that video is because I was targeting a lot of people who are just getting started in their careers and trying to encourage them to just focus on a broad range of fundamental skills rather than diving in deep on a specific technology because that whatever tool or whatever technology you're focusing on is built on top of the broad fundamental skills that if you don't have those. you're not going to be able to transition quickly.
Jillian_Rowe:
So that's the advice you guys, I follow the money. Like that's it, I follow the money.
Jonathan_Hall:
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Jillian_Rowe:
And that's my career advice for all of you. Although
Will_Button:
Yeah,
Jillian_Rowe:
maybe not,
Will_Button:
and
Jillian_Rowe:
okay,
Will_Button:
I don't...
Jillian_Rowe:
fine. You know, I say that and I laugh, but it's first of all, it's very, very true. But I do think if you're earlier in your career, you know, like Will is saying here, get a broad array so that you can get the fundamentals
Jonathan_Hall:
Yeah.
Jillian_Rowe:
and also so that you can even know what's out there because like it's one of these, you don't know what you don't know kind of scenarios where. you're not even going to know all the different tool chains and, um, you know, things that are out there. Like my, you know, my master's degree is basically in data analytics. It's not in DevOps, right? But over time I became more and more interested. I like to think of it as I went like more and more meta over time. You know, first I was doing the data analysis and then I wanted to deal with the tools that did the data analysis. And then I wanted the infrastructure that dealt with the tools that, you know, and just like over time kind of kept going in that direction.
Will_Button:
Hold up rewind.
Jillian_Rowe:
So I do think if you're earlier in your career, go for that.
Will_Button:
No, no, no, we got to rewind. First you say that you don't know everything in DevOps, and now you're telling us your master's degree is not in DevOps either?
Jillian_Rowe:
No, no, it's not. Are there mass, are there degrees in DevOps? Is that like a thing?
Will_Button:
I'm sure somebody will still be one. If no
Jillian_Rowe:
If
Will_Button:
one
Jillian_Rowe:
there's
Will_Button:
else will,
Jillian_Rowe:
not,
Will_Button:
contact
Jillian_Rowe:
maybe that's
Will_Button:
me
Jillian_Rowe:
our
Will_Button:
on
Jillian_Rowe:
new
Will_Button:
Twitter,
Jillian_Rowe:
money making
Will_Button:
I'll tell
Jillian_Rowe:
opportunity,
Will_Button:
you when.
Jillian_Rowe:
you guys. DevOps University right here.
Jonathan_Hall:
Yeah, so... I think on the topic of... sort of broadening your horizons, especially early in your career. I think that's great advice. I would say that there's one skill in particular that is the killer skill, and that is the ability to learn new things. When you think about the industry as a whole, the entire industry of
Will_Button:
Yeah.
Jonathan_Hall:
software development and IT operations, the entire concept of this is building new things. New things means they've never been done before. This is different than manufacturing, where you build a thousand automobiles that all look exactly the same. They have the exact same features and characteristics, everything. So there it's about getting good at building the same thing. In IT, if we want the same thing, we run the copy command. So then we're done. That's it. Poof. That's not what we're doing. We are doing new things. Literally, everything you do every day is new things. Sometimes it's similar to something you did before, but if it was exactly the same, you would just run the copy command. So the fact that we are literally doing new things all the time, inventing new things, inventing new technologies, putting two new things, two old things together in new ways means that, you know, when you think about it in that sense, everything we're doing is learning something new. That's, we're paid to learn stuff in a very literal sense. So if you can learn to learn things effectively, you will go far in your career. no matter what happens to the technology. If Kubernetes goes defunct tomorrow,
Jillian_Rowe:
Thanks for watching!
Jonathan_Hall:
and that's the only thing you know, but you know how to learn the new hotness, whatever that is, you'll be fine because you can just go read the docs and hack it out and figure out what that new hotness, how it works and under the hood and how it ticks. And then you can go sell it to your next employer in just a couple of months. So if anything else, if nothing else, learn how to learn. And I know that's easier said than done. If you haven't learned how to learn and you're already in the job market, I don't really know exactly what to do, except what to tell you what to try. Because it's kind of an aptitude that I think you learn at a young age. But find ways to learn new things on your own, if possible. I mean, it's not to shame you for asking people for help, but... The more you know how to solve a problem on your own, the more equipped you'll be for the job market.
Will_Button:
Yeah, I agree 100%. And learning how to learn. You know, I've heard some people say, because I'm a big advocate of that, like learn the fundamentals and just understand the fundamentals so that you have something to build on. And I've heard from other people like, oh, you're just gatekeeping trying to keep people out of it by setting the bar too high. I'm like, no, I'm really not. Like, I understand how high the bar is. I understand it's a lot to take on and all I can tell you is just chip away at it a little bit at a time. But if you're looking for a shortcut in, it's only gonna come back to haunt you later when you. when you have to transition and that transition requires you to rely on fundamental skills that you never learned.
Jillian_Rowe:
Yeah, and on that note for kind of some hope if people are feeling dejected, you can get a job and start solving valuable problems before you've learned all the fundamentals or you're perfected absolutely everything. It's kind of a constant evolving process. Like I do, you know, well, I consider myself to be a STEM professional, but like I am always learning new things. And even if I don't go like deep into new technology stacks, I at least have like quite a few blogs and you know, like release notes and things like that that I read so that I'm at least staying somewhat current and you know, just remember a lot of my career started off just writing Excel macros to automate things that the labs were doing and that was solving a valuable problem. So, you know, you don't you don't need to know everything or be perfect at everything to get your foot in the door and to just get started.
Will_Button:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think that's probably something that's commonly misunderstood is thinking that you have to learn all of DevOps before you can get a DevOps job or even for other technical related careers. Like you have to learn
Jillian_Rowe:
I don't know
Will_Button:
everything
Jillian_Rowe:
all of DevOps
Will_Button:
about.
Jillian_Rowe:
now, you guys.
Will_Button:
I know right and I'll say I don't either and probably never will. And it's it's just not a requirement, but I think it's often perceived as a requirement. So it's probably worth elaborating and highlighting the fact that you don't have to know it all. You just have to look at a problem and say, I don't know the answer, but I'm going to figure it out.
Jillian_Rowe:
or get a really good network of people. Like I am involved in a lot of open source projects, partially because, you know, ethically, I think open source software is very important, but also because if I contribute to a project and then I have a question on that project and I'm an active contributor or I do, you know, I don't know, like anything, something, right? And I go and I ask a question or I ask for advice or anything like that, they are much more likely to answer me. So I have a lot of sort of... adjacent tool sets and frameworks and things like that that I use on, I mean, basically a daily basis. I'm not the expert in them. And even sometimes, you know, like my clients and things will ask me about something and I'll be like, you know, that's not a me problem. That's this person problem. But I know who to go ask because I know the maintainer of this project. And I found people actually like that. Like I was kind of nervous to say things like that at first, like, oh no, you know. I don't know, maybe some kind of vague imposter syndrome or something like that. What will they think if I don't know all of their answers? But they seem to be kind of reassured by the fact that they're not just relying on me, right? There's this whole community of open source contributors and projects, and I'm not reinventing the wheel for everything. And at the end, when I do a project, I write down, OK, these are all the libraries that we use. These are all the frameworks. Here's people that you can contact about these things. Here are the licenses that are involved, all that kind of stuff. So yeah, you don't need to know everything. You can also just be annoying and bug people until they give you answers, which is what I do.
Will_Button:
It is effective.
Jillian_Rowe:
It is.
Jonathan_Hall:
I suppose this is a good time to plug our episode from a few weeks ago where we talked about how to learn things, right?
Jillian_Rowe:
That's true. We did talk about all the ways that we learn things and keep current and all that kind of good stuff.
Jonathan_Hall:
I think it was episode 137. If you missed it, go check it out.
Will_Button:
Did you look up the episode number? Did you remember that?
Jonathan_Hall:
I remembered it. I remember all 137 episodes.
Will_Button:
Wow, that's impressive.
Jonathan_Hall:
Quiz me. Ha ha ha.
Will_Button:
That's actually really impressive. I had no idea. I only knew that we were past episode 100 because I remember we were going to try to do something special for episode 100.
Jonathan_Hall:
Yeah. Yeah.
Will_Button:
I don't remember if we actually did or not.
Jonathan_Hall:
We did a sort of gear interview episode. Yeah.
Will_Button:
Oh,
Jonathan_Hall:
I remember that one too.
Will_Button:
well there you go.
Jonathan_Hall:
I told you I remember them all.
Will_Button:
I know.
Jonathan_Hall:
Ha ha ha ha ha.
Will_Button:
And Evandale, you weren't lying. OK,
Jonathan_Hall:
I got lucky, you picked the one I actually remember.
Will_Button:
speed round quiz episode 87.
Jonathan_Hall:
The reason I remember 137 is because I had just blogged about it and I had to tell our Michaela, our VA, that it was broken on the website. So that's the only reason I remember that one. It's because I had been actually talking about it recently.
Will_Button:
Right on.
Jonathan_Hall:
It's not broken anymore though, so you can actually go listen to it now.
Will_Button:
Yeah. which is helpful because we just plugged it.
Jonathan_Hall:
Yes, exactly, exactly. So unless it breaks again between the time of this recording and this episode going live, you can definitely go listen to episode 137.
Will_Button:
Once again, that's episode 137. Cool, did we exhaust this topic or is there more to cover?
Jonathan_Hall:
We may have.
Jillian_Rowe:
I think
Will_Button:
Kind
Jillian_Rowe:
so,
Will_Button:
of feels
Jillian_Rowe:
yeah.
Will_Button:
like we
Jillian_Rowe:
I'm
Will_Button:
did.
Jillian_Rowe:
good. I don't have anything else.
Will_Button:
right on. Well, let's move on to pics then.
Jonathan_Hall:
I can go first.
Will_Button:
Um, oh, good, because his awkward silence was getting a little weird.
Jonathan_Hall:
Yeah, I hate that.
Jillian_Rowe:
I wonder if those
Jonathan_Hall:
So I'll just jump in there and say something.
Jillian_Rowe:
get edited out.
Will_Button:
They do.
Jillian_Rowe:
They do? Okay, that's good.
Will_Button:
Yeah.
Jonathan_Hall:
All right. So I'm going to pick a book that isn't really on topic, but it could be interesting for some people. And it's gotten me thinking about something. Anyway, I'll explain that in a second. So the book is called Fix This Next. And it's really designed for business owners, could be a solo consultant or something. But it's kind of a framework for how to identify what part of your business you should focus on next. It's really valuable if you're in management in a larger company, if you're a CEO or something like that. Um, and you know, it's a fairly simple framework to identify. Yeah. Do you need to work on increasing sales or, uh, is that in the bag and you need to work on increasing customer satisfaction or is that working well? You need to work, you know, and it goes all the way up to like, everything is running perfectly smoothly. And, uh, now you need to focus on giving back to the community through, um, you know, donations to charity or, or community. sponsorships or whatever, right? So it's kind of a holistic view of how to decide what to work on next in your business. And I thought I would, I think it would be great to have a framework like this for technology too. So this is one of my sort of brain worms right now is what would it fix this next framework look like for your technology organization, you know? And I imagine that at the bottom layer, he has a pyramid is how he defines it. So the bottom layer is your foundational things like sales and. making money and then as you go up to the top, the tippy top is things like donating millions of dollars to save the whales or whatever. So in a technology organization, I'm imagining things like CI and CD and writing unit tasks and stuff like that, sort of the bottom layer. And maybe customer feedback, making sure you're actually building things customers want, it's gonna be the bottom layer. And somewhere up the chain, you have things like observability and making sure that you have proper alerting set up. And... As you get to the top, it's gonna be things like A-B testing and fine tuning your technology stuff. So that's kind of one of the things I'm thinking about over the last week or so is after I finish this book, what would I fix this next framework look like for technology? And I think this would be a great topic to talk about on our new Reddit. So if you have ideas, hop on over to Reddit slash,
Will_Button:
Why?
Jonathan_Hall:
what is it? R slash adventures and DevOps and let's talk about this.
Will_Button:
Yep, absolutely.
Jillian_Rowe:
That was an excellent segue.
Jonathan_Hall:
My second.
Will_Button:
That was.
Jillian_Rowe:
I have an opinion real quick. I think it
Jonathan_Hall:
Oh yeah.
Jillian_Rowe:
looks like open source software. That's what I think giving back looks like.
Jonathan_Hall:
Oh, that's a great point.
Jillian_Rowe:
But.
Jonathan_Hall:
Yeah. Yep.
Jillian_Rowe:
We should have
Jonathan_Hall:
And that's a good idea.
Jillian_Rowe:
that as a show topic sometime.
Jonathan_Hall:
Yeah. My second pick is going to be me. Uh, I, my, my, my, my contract recently ended, so I'm available for work.
Will_Button:
HUUUH
Jonathan_Hall:
So if you are looking for some help, uh, hit me up, especially looking for like, uh, leadership help. Um, I think I'm going to try this, uh, fractional CTO, um, fractional engineering manager type. thing for a while. So if you're looking for some help, you can't afford full-time CTO or full-time engineering manager, head on over to jhaul.io and send me an email. I'd love to talk to you. Shameless self plug.
Jillian_Rowe:
That sounds neat,
Will_Button:
Yeah,
Jillian_Rowe:
I wanna
Will_Button:
for
Jillian_Rowe:
know how
Will_Button:
sure.
Jillian_Rowe:
that goes. As you should.
Jonathan_Hall:
So, those are my two picks.
Will_Button:
Cool, Jillian, you got some picks? Yeah,
Jillian_Rowe:
I do.
Will_Button:
I like those.
Jillian_Rowe:
I've been watching The Dragon Prince with my kids. It's an animated show on Netflix. And recently it has been really difficult to find things that both my kids will watch. They are eight and 11, so they're kind of, I don't know, at ages where they're like very opinionated about things and they, you know, when one likes something, the other one doesn't like it, just out of the sheer principle of the thing. So anyways, it's been really difficult to find things that we can all watch together as a family. This one really... kind of hit the bucket. Even my husband would watch it for a little bit. And usually he's like, why does everything you watch have dragons or elves or like girls with glowy hands in it? And I'm like, well, I don't want too much reality in my entertainment. Like, let's not be ridiculous here. So anyways, I really liked that show. It's on like, it's fourth season now. It also has a very pretty art style if you're interested in that kind of thing, especially in the fourth season, they do this like really cool hybrid 2D. 3D thing with cell shading and it's very nicely rendered. But we've been enjoying that. I think we're about halfway through the fourth season now and it's looking to be pretty good. So if you're looking for something kind of family friendly to watch, that's been my pick lately.
Will_Button:
Right on. So
Jillian_Rowe:
That's it,
Will_Button:
I was
Jillian_Rowe:
that's
Will_Button:
gonna
Jillian_Rowe:
all
Will_Button:
do
Jillian_Rowe:
I got,
Will_Button:
two
Jillian_Rowe:
you go ahead,
Will_Button:
picks.
Jillian_Rowe:
Will.
Will_Button:
Cool, I was gonna do two, but yours reminded me of one. So I'm gonna add a third pick there because by the time this episode releases, we will be into officially the holiday season. So it's a great time for everyone to watch the best holiday Christmas movie ever, Die Hard. So make sure you get that on your list to watch.
Jonathan_Hall:
You know, I have never seen that.
Jillian_Rowe:
No, listen, I'm gonna fight with you about this. The best Christmas movie is the Muppets' Christmas Carol. And like, that's it.
Will_Button:
Oh, game on.
Jillian_Rowe:
Hahaha
Will_Button:
All right, the Muppets is good. But I'm still gonna go with die hard's a good Christmas movie. I'll rank it above the Muppets. And then there was one I watched where it's got William Shatner in it, where he fights, where Santa Claus fights Krampus. Is that right? It's like a Christmas horror movie and that one's just spectacular. I'll be back next week with that one for my pick because I gotta
Jonathan_Hall:
Thanks.
Will_Button:
look up the name of it. But that's the all time best Christmas movie. But on to my other picks. I picked this a couple weeks ago, picking it again because I'm still reading it and it just gets better and better. Leadership Strategy and Tactics by Jocko Willink. And I think it's great for whether you have leadership aspirations or not. It's a really good read because it just breaks down like what it takes to be on a team and be a contributing functional member. So that's been a great read. And the other one that I'm a part of the way through. which is sort of related to this episode. Matthew Ball, the metaverse, realize that not everyone listening to our podcast is like into blockchain and cryptocurrencies and stuff like I am. But the metaverse book goes beyond that. And the cool part about that is it talks about what we were talking about in this episode of how you take all of these other technologies that we use and use them to build something else. And so they talk about you know how the origins of the internet was the foundation for multi massively multiplayer online role playing games and how that led to current things like, um, like fortnight. And so it does a really cool job of showing how technology transitions over time, which is kind of what we were talking about in this episode. So those are my three picks for this. then.
Jillian_Rowe:
Cool.
Will_Button:
Yeah? Cool. Well, thanks everyone and I'll see you all next week.
Jonathan_Hall:
Hasta luego!
Jillian_Rowe:
Bye.