Ready to show off your coding skills to the world? Not so fast. In this episode, Will and Jillian discuss why developers need to simplify their product with the end goal in mind—the customer. They share some awesome examples of how to do this, how you can win Future You’s approval, and the steps to create a smooth user experience.

“I think it’s a hard mental shift to say that my area of expertise shouldn’t be visible in the product. But, you need to understand the end goal. My goal is to automate myself out of a job, then move on.”

In This Episode:
 Jillian shares a killer example that should inspire all DevOps people to simplify their process
 As a programmer, you want to tell the customer how great your programming is, right? Hold on…Will shares a different perspective
 How Will approaches his programming that avoids all customer confusion and creates a seamless experience
 What Jillian believes is MORE important than learning how to code (sometimes)
 Why you need these TWO things that will earn Future You’s approval

Hey. What's going on, everyone? Hey. What's going on, everyone? I'm Will Button, and this is Adventures in DevOps.

Today, I've got the cohost with the most with me, Jonathan Hall. Hey, everybody. How's it going? And today, we have our very special guest, Daniele Fontani. How are you, man?

I'm fine. I'm fine. Thank you for having me. We had quite an adventure in DevOps this afternoon, getting this this recorded. It has truly been an adventure.

Sure. Sure. It's we are talking about adventure and fish and art of soap. It's the cool combination. Exactly.

So we've actually got an article from you about I gotta I gotta pull up the title here because the title just cracks me up. Triceratops, why DevOps is not only an acronym. And and this is a great article to read. We'll put a link to it in the show notes, but it's got the unique combination of being humorous and, informative. And so we're gonna dig into that and talk about acronyms and DevOps.

But, first, for any of our listeners who may not be familiar with this, you wanna give us a little bit about your background? Sure. I work as a CTO in SimTRA Digital Business. That's a digital company, and we try to help companies for accelerating their digital, transformation, of course. And in this company, I love to advise about DevOps, of course.

In the spare time, I love to play with open source project and contribute to to the community. And I love also to write article for sharing my my my opinion and and be in touch with the community itself. So that's why also I'm here, and I love to be here with you. Right on. So tell us, how did you get to how did you even get to the point where you were writing an article called Triceratops, why DevOps is not only an acronym?

Oh, sure. Sure. The story is quite, is is quite funny. It's quite funny because it it comes from a previous article. My previous article that was, it has a little bit provocative title.

DevOps is dead, long life to apps. Where where in that article, I write about why we should focus more on the app development and try to find some way to automate the application development instead of wasting a lot of time on the infrastructure. And then already, when user reply to the comment and tell me, what would be the next, the next one acronym was in DevOps would be. So this make me laugh so much, and I told myself, I will have to write an article about that. So that's how I, I I think I'm gonna have to use this.

I have to say I mean, I I have these conversations all the time where someone's like, yeah. What do you think about DevOps, DevSecOps, this DevSecOps, blah blah blah. I'm gonna just start throwing price paradox in there. Sure. But but now that we have, learned that the algorithm is quite simple because you can take the ops word and put something on in front in front of that.

So you can be everything ops, of course. But at the end, it's always the ops because there are many way, many improvement of the same things. When we talk about GitOps, we don't it's not something different than hops on discops and and so on. I think that at the end, what you are doing is DevOps, of course, but there are many way to do that. There are many driver.

One driver one important driver is about automation and reduce the human effort on on the operation side and how you can do that. You can do that by implementing in the hops. You can but at the end, what is in the hops? Not, of course, is the use using the cloud and implementing automation or using tool that we that do that for you. So at the end, probably, there is only one DevOps topic.

I don't know what you think about that, but I I don't see too many difference between tools approach. What I see is a way for putting something, inside our actual DevOps process. Like the think about DevSecOps. You know? It's this is another, bad word.

This everybody will do that. But what is DevSecOps in the end? Is is is really different than DevOps or is really different to implement a DevSecOps process rather than a regular DevOps process? I don't think so because you just have to add another add other people into the process, add all other competencies into the process. If you are able to have automate automated test on application, maybe you can also automate security test.

So from a point of view, all that are buzzword, and we have to hear that buzzword. Because I think it's important to to have to listen to the new new trends and follow the new trends and take what is good in that. But then we have to put into into our reality, we have to put in practice what theory tells. And and the thing that this is the probably this is the the most important thing to remember when we see some acronyms or bad word in, in some Twitter or LinkedIn post. And if you if you read some title like, DevOps is dead, long life to hop offs, of course, don't trust this this article.

You don't trust, that author because probably they are trying to to tell you something not not so terrible. Probably it's just something that you can add to your to your experience, but it's not something revolutionary. What else? I believe I be I really believe in the no ops trend. Just we talking that to to to don't believe the acronyms, but I really love the driver of putting less effort as possible on the operation part.

And this, of course, for me doesn't mean forget about that part or take some risk. Of course, you have to use an infrastructure that works, that is performant. But what you should do is to use as much as possible tools and platforms that make possible that you have to focus only on the software part. Because more time you spend on the software part, more value you put in your product. And more value has your product and more customer will will buy it.

So we have to focus on what bring value, to us. This can be done. This this is possible. This is possible because we have lot of tool in the market for automating, releases, an example, for automatic testing, example. We have a lot of tool that automatically build your application and deploy, to an infrastructure that is fully managed, maybe, of course.

And we can use hyperscalers services. But I think this is a very, very good driver. A very, very good driver because any minute you spend on mounting hard drive on a server or connecting with cable to devices, it's time that you that you've asked because the cloud do we do that for you, and cloud services are reliable, are performant, and are good. I when I talk about this transformation, a lot of CIS admin are scared because they they think, what will happen to me? Yeah.

For sure. A lot of people are scared by scared by the the kind of article I write because they they ask, what what will be my future? Maybe future will be different. I think that everybody has to change if we think about informatics and programming 10 years ago. It's very different.

And in next 10 year, we'll be all we'll be more different. So we are evolving. DevOps, is spreading and forces admin guys, they have to start a transformation. Transformation could be become DevOps, but there are a lot of other things that we have to do even if we have even if we are approaching a no hop scenario, we will still have to monitor the application. We will still have to take care about security.

We will still have to take care about invoices. And we are it's easy to start a cloud service. We just have to put credit card number into the system, and you are set. But what is the the problem? The problem is that every month every month, you will have an invoice.

And you have to pay attention about what you are paying, what you are taking for. And this is, this is a new job, a new job. Of course, big companies spend 1,000 not 1,000, but 100 of 1,000 of of dollar monthly in cloud. So if you save, if you are to if you are able to save the 10% of you use the resources or you you do improvement, this is a a good value. And maybe you will stop to plug cable and you will start to take care about financial financial as the FinOps, another bad zone, sorry for that.

Also FinOps is is another trend that that that is that will be important because more and more we will use the cloud, more and more we will get invoices from the cloud, and more and more we want to be sure to spend for what what we use. So there are a lot of new profession that this that are that are growing near the DevOps, near the cloud. So I won't be scared. I don't want to be scared about the the end of the on premise because, we have always fear to to talk about that, but but the on premise is is is low in dying. I don't know for how many years we will still have on premise data center for how many years we will still have to plug cable on, our data center.

So for most of us, the the time of the retirement is very long. So so we have to we have to think about what we have to do and build that. So if we're a sysadmin guys, I won't be scared about DevOps. I won't be scared about, you know, ops. I will take this as an opportunity of being able to change my my my work, change my professional, and do something that brings more value for the for the company and for myself.

But probably, I I see that I I'm probably I I don't want to be too rude, but but I'm but I think this is the reality, probably. Yeah. No. I agree with you a 100%. Like, there's no scenario in technology where you can get a job and do that same job for the next 30 or 40 years until you retire.

Like, there's just that just doesn't exist. And if that's important to you in your career, technology is probably the wrong career path for you. Become a waiter. Right. People always wanna eat.

Yeah. Sure. And by the way, I was a waiter, and I loved it. It it's it's fun work. I'm not dissing the job.

I've actually never done that. You are missing out. We just need waiter ops now. Food ops. And I agree.

I mean, the truth is I mean, I I actually had somebody ask me the other day, aren't you concerned about shift left? Because doesn't that just mean automating more things? And my response was not really. I'm not I mean, yes. That's gonna be what it means or part of what it means, but somebody has to write and maintain that automation.

And, you know, there until we invent general AI, which may or may never happen, there's always gonna be people who are maintaining automation. And that's what I mean, that's kind of what DevOps has become. Right? So that that this this practice is not going anywhere anytime soon. It will change in every way, but it it's it's not we're not getting we're not gonna be replacing people with with automation.

Sure. But if you think not only to take not relating to the technology, but if you think what happened on the in the industrial revolution, it's the same. Nobody nowadays, can think about going producing a car without using machines. Right. And the the same is, is in in the in the in programming and in DevOps and so on.

If we can avoid the human effort, of course, there is no reason there is no reason to still, spend man days instead of money. There is no reason. I think one of the other things that you touched on that's really resonates with me is the whole business of monitoring cloud expenses. And I think a lot of people underestimate how big of a value that is. You know, one, just to be able to help identify where those expenses are and control those costs.

But for a lot of us, it may be the first time in your career when you can actually quantify the value that you bring to a company. You know, a lot of times if you're a sysadmin or an IT administrator or a network engineer, that's like a fixed cost. You know? You can go to any number of websites and see what your salary is gonna be within a certain range. But when you get into, like, managing cloud based expenses, your value your like, the value you provide to be able to cut someone's cloud bill by 10% is gonna be different from someone who's spending in $10,000 a month on the cloud versus someone who's spending $200,000 a month on the cloud.

And so 10% gives you a way to quantify the work that you're doing. And whenever you can do that, it gives you the ability to negotiate what you want as a salary, which is something that's unique to people from sysadmin, IT, even programming backgrounds. Sure. And of course, it is one of the new profession that that will be very important. And, of course, as you told, more highly is the the expense of the company and more you are useful in that in that role.

And for us as admin guys, the question is, where I can bring more value? Plugging a cable or spending 5 minute to control the cost? Probably, the answer is the second one, and probably you will need not only technical, competencies, but also financial and and other kind of competencies. So these require did this teach us another third thing is that another thing that's happening is that involves, developers and the boss guys. And that teach us to learn not only hard skill and not only technical technical, competencies, but also work on the soft skill because also being able to read the balance or number is is is important for who is administrating a cloud, a cloud services.

And moreover, think about the scenario when you have more than one cloud provider. Because a lot of companies now are implementing, multi cloud strategy because they fear they lock in and they don't want to stay on only one IPOs Scalar because it could it could fail and what if the there is some issues. So they stay multi cloud. They but multi cloud is harder to maintain because you have services spread along multiple vendors with different pricing model, with different invoices. And this is very hard to manage.

And it is very easy to forgot about units of resources, left active some servers, an example that you are not using. This need attention and more need attention. The the fact that in this complex scenario in this complex scenario, there are also security security problem that we have to monitor. So cloud, is a very good opportunity for people that are more related with hardware to grow and to start a new career probably and bring more value to companies and bring more value to itself. Because for what I see on on job advice is, the most professional are very, very well paid in in the world and more and more paid.

So this is another things that we have to take in account at the end. Yeah. Very good. Good observations. I think it's really interesting.

I hadn't really thought about this until now, but I deal a lot with people who are starting their DevOps careers, and a lot of the focus is on the technical skills. But from your perspective, like, there's a a huge or what feels like a huge unserved market of these other skills, you know, the financial skills and the communication skills and, like, the the business skills to be able to translate business requirements into DevOps or infrastructure requirements and then quantify that. You're right. I probably have not a a clear answer. It is hard to quantify this amount of, competencies.

But even in the in the programming world, developer need to be more more more and more able to communicate with teammates. Also, I don't know if you remember, maybe 10 years ago when we had software developer and then architects. With the Cloud, each developer have to be more architect and less developer because you if you know which, which, piece take from the cloud and put together, you will save a lot of time. So, competencies are are really changing and having good soft skill helps a lot. On the box carrier, probably the most important the most important soft skill I can image is the communication one because you often are in the middle between, software and infrastructure, and you have to understand what is happening.

Often, it's hard to find the the true between, between software and infrastructure when software doesn't work. So we have to be good communicator, and don't be scared about the issue because because when a issue happen in production, you still have to find solution very quickly. And and also problem solving is a very good competencies that you have that you need. The things that scare me about soft skill at least that is very hard to to develop the the soft skill. So there are not courses that you can buy on Udemy or on some other training platform for being able to communicate on something like that.

So so this is a good question. This is a good question. Probably, I don't have an a good answer for that. Yeah. That's a great point.

I agree a 100%. Maybe that can be our next ops acronym as we create a, we create a generator framework for communications. It just automatically generates the right buzzword for you to say at the right time. Why? True.

Did you ever speak pig Latin, Will? Yeah. I think we might be onto something here. We could do something like that. Just put that off to the end of every word in your sentence.

This is what happens when Chuck leaves us alone to do the podcast. This is how I convince him never to leave us alone again. Right. I love that. I love that.

Well, I liked your article. I I like the point. It's, I mean, it's basically a joke now, isn't it? You can just add ops to everything. I mean, we were making the literal joke about it, but, like, in the industry, it's a joke.

You can just call anything ops, baseball ops, and football ops, and and people ops, and whatever. It's it's almost lost its meaning. But you you really made a good point. You know? The the principles are essentially the same.

The idea of making things simpler through through the use of automation and and tearing down silos, and and that that's that's valuable. Whatever you wanna call it. It. Whether we call it DevSecOps or DevOps or or whatever. It's a it's a great goal, and it's proven very valuable.

Sure. Yep. Agreed. So when you talk about so you this article was was, inspired by a comment on your previous article, which is about AppOps. What was that?

Was that intended as a as a sort of tongue in cheek or or sarcasm or a joke? Or was that, what was your what was your point about app ops? Sure. Sure. A pops is why I told never trust who who, is writing the article like the box is dead law.

Don't like to have a because Exactly. This is a a little a little clickbait title, of course. And, and, of course but we we have also to find a way now for being great. So we have to put such kind of title to be read. But the content of the article talks about still talks about the the the the principle of finding a way for putting your attention on apps instead of infrastructure.

And this this is important to remember, especially when you adopt some some tool like Kubernetes, an example, that is a very very good tool and can be used the cloud and simplify your life, but need a strong governance. And in this article, I I find a way for for finding tools for finding tools that could be able for to to simplify to simplify the Kubernetes the Kubernetes governance and let you focus just on the source code development. And doing that, what happen? Happen that you write the code, and you describe how the application should be deployed, and everything is done by itself. So don't worry about ports, services, scaling, reverse scaling, and so on.

So this is a good way for starting approaching Kubernetes and the deployment itself in a different way. So just take this with code and describe how the application should be deployed. Don't worry about what will happen because you can support that there will be a tool that will take this information or will translate this information into an infrastructure for your application. Good. Thank you.

You brought up a really good point our earlier, and I and I wanna highlight it because I think there's a lot of hidden value in it. You mentioned specifically in in regards to app ops that that puts the value on the things that your customers are paying you for. Right? Because and I've I've heard this stated multiple ways in the past, but, basically, like, no customer is ever buying your product because of because of how you built your Docker files. Right?

They're they're paying you for the service that you're providing and and I think that's really important. You know? It's not to say that, like, creating good, efficient, secure Dockerfiles is not important because it is, but it's important to keep it in perspective in, like, what's its role in the business of generating money for this company. Sure. And this this is hard to say because we as technician, we love to to let the customer how we are doing things, and we put a lot of effort for keep possible that the product works for writing code, I mean, creating good infrastructure.

But the the customer basically don't mind about that. He is this is not important that the software is safe because he know the software is safe. It is a requirement. Right. So so so we we cannot he's not surprised if if you tell that you are doing the best.

You are using the best tool ever. It is supposed to you to to use. So it's important to keep a to pay attention to where the money comes from. And when I tell product, I'm not referring only to startups or SAS product, but every company every company has a core business. And in this core business, there is inside some part of the ITO.

Nowadays, we we cannot start run a company without some IT, some software development, and this is part of the product. But you have to pay you have to be able to move your attention, your mess days, and your mind to the software development, to the application development, to the feature. And if you can find a way for using tool or solution that work by itself, and you can buy. So you cannot forget about infrastructure. You cannot forget about DevOps and so on, but you have to find the way for buying things that works without human effort.

This is my opinion. Yeah. I agree. Well said. Hear.

Hear. All in favor, say aye. Right. Motion passes. Alright.

What else should we talk about? Sounds like we have consensus then. I guess so. Sure. It was a great adventure.

I think you solved the world. We did. We just need the right acronym to sell it. For sure. Sure.

When you will discover a new acronym, just let me know. I will write a new article on that. Deal. I must be the first one writing an article. Gotta get that 1st round SEO clickbait.

Sure. Sure. It's his chance, sir. Alright. So, we're ready to wrap this episode up?

Yeah. I guess we need some pics, don't we? We do. Yeah. So, Daniele, at the end of each episode, we do we do a pick.

It can be something technical related or not technical related. Just something to, that has piqued our interest, and then we use that as our pick. So we'll, throw out our picks. Then if there's something, something for you that you would like to share with the listeners, we'll give you a chance to do that. Okay?

Alright. Jonathan, you wanna kick us off? Sure. I wasn't prepared, actually, even though I I reminded you, I wasn't prepared. But I guess I'll go with the pick.

So I actually used to work for the company that makes the product I'm with the pick, but my wife and I just bought our 2nd Bugaboo stroller. Bugaboo makes really nice strollers. So we we have one we had since my son was born almost a year ago, but we wanted a new one that's more compact. It will because we just went on a long road trip, and it was a little bit of a pain to pull it in and out of the trunk. So Bugaboo has a new stroller called the Ant, which actually collapses into a size that will fit in an overhead compartment on an airplane.

So we just got the stroller earlier this week, put it together, and we haven't actually flown with it yet, but it looks nice. It's a sturdy stroller. It's nice quality stuff. They are a little bit on the expensive side, but they are high quality, and they have a high resale value. So after your kids outgrow your your Bugaboo, you can resell it and get and recoup a big portion of your investment.

So that's my pick for this week, Bugaboo. Nice. Yeah. And some of those are are absolutely huge. They're like monster truck sized strollers.

They they have they have a twin one that actually fits 2 kids next to it. So if you have twins or you have 2 children that are that are both stroller age, they don't have to be the same same age, but you could have an infant with a 2 year old, for example. You can put them side by side. So, yeah, they they have quite a range of different options. Nice.

Alright. So my pick for the week is gonna be a nontechnical pick. It's a new book I picked up. Courage is calling fortune favors the brave from Ryan Holiday, and it's I'm just getting started into it, but it's it's really cool. I've read multiple Ryan Holiday books, and I think he always does this great job of, like, relating everyday struggles back to, like, how philosophers would handle that, you know, and how to stick to your your moral code.

And so this one is actually recently written. It's very relevant to the world that we live in today, and I'm enjoying it. So if you're looking for, like, a how to guide for 2021 and what comes in the future, Courage is calling, fortune favors the brave by Ryan Holiday. You say a how to for 2021, but you know how to have done it already. The 2021 well, there's, like, 2 weeks left when this episode comes up.

Well, it could be a busy 2 weeks. It could be. I'm so excited. Alright, Daniele. How about you?

You got anything to pick for us? I'm good. I'm waiting for some for my rest in, in in the Christmas holidays because I need that. Nice. Yes.

Yes. Alright. Cool. Well, I think that's gonna wrap up our episode. Daniele, thank you so much.

This has been a really fun episode. It's been a really cool topic. I've enjoyed it. Thank you really for this chat. This was very, very interesting.

I'm sorry for the technical problems with connection. But at the end, I'm very happy that we find a solution in this adventure DevOps. Yeah. I mean, that's what we do. We find solutions.

Right? Sure. It's it's what we do. Exactly. Okay.

Thank you. Bye bye. Alright. See you guys. Next time.