Ep 27 - Insights from a Cloud Therapist with Chris Williams - C2C027

Chris Miles: 0:00

Welcome to the Cables to Clouds podcast. Cloud adoption is on the rise and many network infrastructure professionals are being asked to adopt a hybrid approach. As individuals who have already started this journey, we would like to empower those professionals with the tools and the knowledge to bridge the gap. Hello, welcome back to another episode of the Cables to Clouds podcast. My name is Chris Miles at BGP Main on X sorry, not X Twitter See.

Alex Perkins: 0:41

I tried to not say it and I said the wrong word You're fired. You're fired.

Chris Miles: 0:45

My bad, my bad, I didn't mean to do that, but yeah, joining me, as always, my beautiful co-host Tim McConaughey at Juan Gómez and Alex Perkins at Bumps in the Wire on Twitter, we have a very special guest joining us today, so we have Chris Williams, aka Mist Wire, as many probably know him on in the Twitter sphere.

Chris Williams: 1:12

Hey everybody.

Chris Miles: 1:13

Hey, chris, thanks for coming on. Chris is pretty big on social media. If you haven't seen him, he's a. Actually, I thought I'd just throw it over to you. Chris, tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do. What makes you?

Chris Williams: 1:27

tick. I can't tell if pretty big on social media is an indictment or a compliment.

Chris Miles: 1:33

You're pretty tall man on social media.

Chris Williams: 1:36

I'm a giant human that happens to take pictures of himself and do selfies. Hey everyone, my name is Chris Williams. I am the developer advocate manager for North America for HashiCorp. I am also an AWS hero, a VMware vExpert. I have a lot of certifications. I run a couple of user groups. I have my own podcast and I like doing stuff in public. I like learning in public and I like sharing my knowledge and helping other people level up. Whether that goes with cloud or programming or networking or virtualization or even just career advice, I try to help people skill up in IT stuff that I know about. That's me. Good night everybody. No questions, no further questions. Your honor, no very good answer.

Chris Miles: 2:30

Yeah, you are very much a person that lives in public and I admire that because at some points I'm like I don't know what Chris does in private, because all of this is out here in the open. So you know, we don't need to get into that.

Chris Williams: 2:43

My wife does not hate my career, but nine times out of ten she'll be like do not post that on social media.

Chris Miles: 2:52

That's nice.

Tim McConnaughy: 2:53

Yeah, I get that too.

Chris Miles: 2:55

But yeah. So we kind of wanted to just bring Chris on to have kind of a free form conversation about probably many, many different things, but I think one of the first things that we might get into is Veeve Brownbag. So Veeve Brownbag has been something that's been around for God. It's been quite a few years now, right, and I think have you been a part of it.

Chris Williams: 3:16

I'm 12 years now. 12 or 13 years now?

Chris Miles: 3:18

Have you been a part since day one, or is it? Oh, no, no, no Okay.

Chris Williams: 3:23

So Veeve Brownbag started 10, 12, 13 years ago as an effort with Cody Bunch and Alistair Cook and the original folks. Everybody was studying for their VMware certifications back then the VCP, the VCIX, the VCNV, all those things and they're like you know what We've been studying in private. Let's just go ahead and hit the record button on a camera and turn this into a YouTube channel. The name started off as Professional VMware or VMware Professional. I forget what the original name was, but eventually they were like well, let's make this a little bit more agnostic. It's not just VMware stuff, it's technical things that we want to learn about, because there's a lot of. Even back then there was a lot of peripheral things that you needed to learn about VEX, git, a version control, ansible Puppet. There was a lot of things around it. So they agnosticized, if that's a word. They changed them to Veeve Brownbag because corporate Brownbag lunches were where everybody came together to learn something during lunch and they're like okay, well, it's a Brownbag lunch but nobody's present, so it's virtual, so we're going to call it Veeve Brownbag. So it started off as getting your certification, so how to study for your VMware cert or not. I mean any kind of cert that was available we wanted to do a learning track on.

Chris Williams: 4:48

I latched onto Veeve Brownbag at one of the VMware VMware worlds I was about to say VMware Explorer, but that's not what they were called back. Then Called them VM worlds, like God intended. And I met John and Al and all of them face to face for the first time and I was like you guys helped me get my VCP for I think it was this was a long time ago VCP for VCP five and I said I really appreciate all the stuff that you've done. And then I said the fatal words is there anything that I could do to help too? And they're like well, you just signed your life away Actually, not that you mentioned it. So that's actually how I got into community.

Chris Williams: 5:31

I was not a user group leader at the time. I was not doing anything publicly facing, I just liked learning and I love learning sitting. I mean, I hate sitting for certifications, but I really enjoy the learning process to prep for a certification. So I just started doing that in public with the guys. And then I was like okay, how do we make this get bigger? Not for the sake of trying to be bigger or anything, but how do we appeal to a broader audience and how do we help more people level up than just folks going for their VM workshops? Because AWS was coming out at that time and the first time I logged into my console, I actually just looked at the first AWS account that I created, and that was in 2011. And I was like early adopter.

Chris Williams: 6:19

When I created that AWS account and I first started creating services and resources in AWS, that was it. I mean, the lights came on, the angels saying the sun beam came down from heaven and I was like holy crap, this is going to change everything, because up until that point I was the schlub with the cat five cable between my teeth, crawling underneath the floorboards of the colo trying to hook the sands up and everything and get the. My career was I started off as a CCNA, got my A plus, got my CCNA, started off in the networking sphere, then I got into the SysAdmin sphere, then I got into the DBA storage sphere and by the time I finished I had touched everything with the exception of actually programming. When I left corporate enterprise work, I was an EA over at WWT, so I was at the top EA, meaning enterprise architect. I was at the top of that level. And then I flipped over and became a DA over at Hashicorp, which was a complete career change.

Chris Williams: 7:18

And so V Brownbag was the catalyst for so many jumping points in my career, and every time I went to a different jumping point I would then create a series for that. So we had the VMware series, we had the AWS series, we had the Git series, then we did like two years of Python. Every time that I wanted to learn something new, I just drug, kicking and screaming sometimes, the best minds of that field onto the show and then, after we cut, after we stopped recording, I would then pick their brains. Okay, what are the top five books that you could show me that I can then go read and then create more content for? So that's what V Brownbag has been under my stewardship, I guess.

Alex Perkins: 8:06

When did this start? When did you really start stewarding? I guess all the V Brownbag stuff Was that right after when you said the VM world where you talked to them. Yeah, I mean. So when I say stewardship.

Chris Williams: 8:20

I mean, everybody has been pitching it. I mean, anybody that has ever been a host of V Brownbag has never really stopped being a host. They might have not done a show in like five years but they could jump on tomorrow and continue doing what if they wanted to. So we have a. If you look at the number of co-hosts and presenters on the webpage, the number of hosts that we have is almost as long as the number of presenters that we've had. There's a. We have a long lineage of folks that have been in there.

Chris Williams: 8:52

Yeah, I would say that for the past six or seven years I've been the most consistent. But I'm not like I don't run it, I don't own it, it's not my thing, it is. It is very much a community effort. It is very much a co-host driven thing. We recently brought on Sean Doyle, roger White and Shala Werner gift to AKM, shala Werner gift to AKM at gifted lane as co-hosts and we are now doing kind of like a.

Chris Williams: 9:20

It used to be just one presenter and one host and I kind of like the multi-cohost format, like you guys are doing, where different questions can be asked from different professional backgrounds to the same person, and just kind of like have this fun vibe going on. So we've been doing that for half of 2023. And we just I mean, and now we're in 2024, we're going to start, we're continuing to do it and it's working out really well. I do what I'm good at, like the video editing and the cutting, and just being the big dumb head asking stupid questions. And Sean asks the AI questions, roger asks the security questions, shala asks like the DevOps and cloud engineering questions and it just it works really, really well.

Chris Miles: 10:02

I was going to say I joined one of the recent webinars not too long ago and it was obviously it was very relaxed, but it became very informative because you guys were just riffing for you know a little good hour or so, but it was it was super cool.

Chris Miles: 10:15

I don't remember exactly. I think it was one of the first ones that you guys did with this new format, maybe the first or second one, I think it was last year, for sure in 2023. But yeah, it was super cool because, like you said, everyone kind of has their own vertical that they're working in and then that kind of played into the dynamic and how you guys talk about things and it was very useful. It was quite good.

Chris Williams: 10:39

And we're actually changing the time now. So brown bags are usually at lunchtime, but V Brownback has always been 830 at night, 830 PM Eastern. It's been tough since the end of the pandemic because it's people don't want to be in Zoom sessions all day long and then, you know, join another Zoom session at night. So we're actually toying with moving the format up to a lunchtime. So we're now trying to do them at 1 PM Eastern, which is noon central, roughly around the lunchtime of the US time zones, to see if that, you know, if people are actually willing to take a lunch break and join us.

Chris Miles: 11:15

Yeah, new form of the lunch and learn, I guess.

Tim McConnaughy: 11:19

Right, and that was kind of the like you said that was kind of the goal or not. Not the goal necessarily, but that was kind of the theme originally. Right, was that kind of lunch and learn type of behavior?

Chris Williams: 11:29

We're actually playing with, like you know, making fun of the Brownback type lunch and, like everybody, have like a V Brownback branded brown bag and then, like you know, what do you got in your Brownback? You know, we're trying to toy with it. I mean, it's been 13 years, it's been going on for almost 13 years now. So trying to inject not just like the new technology stacks, but like a new vibe to the show and everything. Because now that we've got four people on, why don't we just start taking ideas and seeing what works from the larger audience as well? So we've got the live Twitch stream. Now we've got the YouTube stream. We're fielding questions live from both audiences simultaneously. We're moderating and letting the presenter do their thing, but then also taking the good questions from the audience. I do have a couple of friends that tend to join and start asking silly questions.

Alex Perkins: 12:23

Looking at you, richard.

Tim McConnaughy: 12:23

Yeah boy, there's always one.

Chris Miles: 12:27

Yeah, and it usually is me, but I can't wait till you guys start virtually trading snacks like someone you know shall is putting cup like like hand, actually hand the potato chip to you.

Chris Williams: 12:39

There you go. See, it's a magic show now.

Chris Miles: 12:43

If it happens. You heard it here first, that's right, it's a build that in at attribution to Chris.

Chris Miles: 12:49

Miles. Thank you, thank you, I'll take that. That being said, I mean, what's what as of right now? The way it stands? Obviously, like you said, v Brownback has been around for a very long time. The probably the target audience has also shifted a little bit, like it's expanded. It's kind of moved along with the, with the industry trends and things like that. Who would you say is the target audience for V Brownback right now? Is it more general or is it more focused?

Chris Williams: 13:14

at this point, the original target audience was people like me, folks that were halfway through their career looking to get certified to maintain relevancy in what they were doing. Demographic is now turning into the gray bearded curmudgeonly it, old guy, I guess. Oh, I hate saying that. So what I am trying to do, with the addition of the new hosts and everything like that, is to expand the role of that demographic. I'm trying to engender folks that are afraid of code. So I mean the writing on the wall right now is very far and few in between.

Chris Williams: 13:58

People are going to be actual hardware folks, the days of assembling you know pizza box systems and slapping them into racks and stacks and cages and everything like that. That's not the majority of folks anymore. It used to be. They still need to know how networking works and they still need to know how to connect hard drives to systems, but they need to know how to do all of those programmatically through an API from version control. So the folks that are in ops today need to know how to do all of that stuff from a conceptual level and from a logical level, but not actually from a physical level, which is really weird and hard for me to grok, because I assembled those things manually with my hands, so turning that into an API in my head is, I would argue, a little bit easier than the folks that have no concept of how things work underneath the covers because everything's been abstracted away from them. So I'm trying to cross that bridge on VBrownback and help folks get from point A to point B without actually taking a switch apart on camera.

Tim McConnaughy: 15:08

So this is kind of interesting and I've been seeing this more and more around Twitter recently and I'm sure you probably have as well as this whole AI thing really gets into high gear here. I keep seeing people saying that enterprises are going to be building more on-prem to support AI-type workloads, and so I'm wondering. First of all I think I've talked about this on the show before I kind of disagree generally with that, because I think most people won't be able to afford the power in cooling and hardware for it. But having said that, there could still be this kind of renaissance, if you will, of on-prem as more as cloud and on-prem even out to become a little bit more hybrid. So I don't think we've seen the end of it and there'll always be somebody that has to pull cables. But I agree generally, I think that's.

Chris Williams: 16:04

I wasn't trying to say the death of the data center person is nigh. You're absolutely right. There is always going to be a need for, like, localized compute. It's just not going to be as prevalent as it used to be and that skill set is going to become much more rarefied, I think, whereas before, like when I was coming up, it was okay, we've got these two servers and we need to network them together. Chris, break out a buck and figure it out. Oh, this system needs more processing power. Or this system needs more. Chris, figure out what more is and then how to put and how to jam it in there. If that's possible, that knowledge is it's.

Chris Williams: 16:50

I honestly believe that, folks, from when I got into tech, I think that it's easier for us to grok how systems break down in the world today, because if you look at any process, it breaks down into your four food groups RAM, memory, cpu and disk.

Chris Williams: 17:07

If you understand the interrelation between the four food groups and how, when you're trying to go from point A to point B and move your ones and zeros from point A to point B, what are the potential things that can bottleneck you and what the markers are for seeing how those things are bottlenecking that's. That's a feel that you get after doing it for a while in the physical space. When, when you're just clicking on a website and it takes longer than not for something to come up and everybody's losing their mind, it's harder for somebody that has been born into that very abstracted world to methodically step through the process. I have this interview question that I asked people to figure out what they know, and I say my interview question is you type wwwhashicorpcom into a web, into a web browser? Walk me through in, as I wateringly detailed as humanly possible what it takes for from the time that you hit enter to the time that the Hashicorp website comes up on your screen.

Tim McConnaughy: 18:05

Yeah, it's a good one.

Chris Williams: 18:06

And, and I've had people talk about bus speeds, I've had people talk about keyboard pass through. I've had people to I mean, you know, there's the DNS piece and there's the server piece, and then there's, but I've had people talk about ones and zeros going to the disk on the back end. I mean, but, but you, you, you start to really understand what they understand about how this whole thing works, because if you grew up in networking, you're going to answer it completely differently from if you grew up in coding.

Tim McConnaughy: 18:36

That's very true and I totally agree with you, by the way, on the, the abstraction layer, if you will. So my first job I was in a knock and that was my first job at networking, not my first job forever. First job in networking, sorry, was in a knock and I came from nothing. I got my CCNA in a few months and I went straight to a knock. So I had never actually even touched a physical piece of Cisco kit. Right, and I knew how to configure it. I could do all this other stuff right. But in terms of the actual physical, like in the rack here, like I didn't know it, like I didn't know it and I it ended up being a problem. Like you know, there's things that that I was telling people that people needed to do, or like I was kind of visualizing it differently than it really was. So I completely agree, there's a different blue cable.

Chris Williams: 19:20

put it in there Not the green one.

Alex Perkins: 19:22

If you have your fingers on the rack bolts right, Sacrifice your blood to the blood.

Chris Williams: 19:27

God Blood. Yes, those, those old, the scuzzy cages from the old compact sir, maybe I'm, maybe I'm showing my age here, but the old compact servers had these machined cages for the scuzzy discs that were razor sharp. If you, if you pulled your hand away and you weren't bleeding profusely, you were a genius.

Tim McConnaughy: 19:48

The old cage nuts without the tool. Right Like that's. That's the fun one. You don't have the tool you got. You got your fingers or maybe a screwdriver, but you're, you're definitely sacrificing blood.

Alex Perkins: 19:59

You stick some keys in there and try to get a wedge them out.

Chris Williams: 20:02

I still have my Leatherman that I always carried around with me in the data center just to get those little, those little bastards, the pinchy ones. Yeah, that's the ones.

Chris Miles: 20:11

Yeah. So let's, let's, let's actually transition this a little bit. So we've talked about the brown bag and kind of the goals and where that's where that's moved along. Let's, let's, let's talk about Chris a little bit. You know, I will say one thing. That's been funny, I think back when, like like we said when we just started recording is, I think technically, chris and I were co workers for a brief period of time and I remember seeing some, some of your posts on LinkedIn and I don't know if this was still this way when you're at Worldwide Earth has happened strictly when you moved over to to Hashacorp, I remember you always had the title in your social media profile of cloud therapist, yeah, and I remember seeing that and be like what the hell does that mean? So let's, let's open that up a little bit. And exactly what, what does that mean? And where do you, how do you, how do you help people with, with that?

Chris Williams: 21:02

Alright, so that title has a number of lives and I'm going to try to tie them all together in a common thread. Right now. My university degree is in psychology. I specialized in conflict resolution. That was the thing that I was sort of thought I wanted to be. I got halfway through my master's in psychology, the university offered me a fellowship and I apologized to my professor who I greatly disappointed because she she went to bat for me, got me the money to to join to have a fellowship. And then I pissed off halfway through because I was in. I was in the dorm room and I fell in love with doom.

Chris Williams: 21:42

Love playing doom to the extent, to the extent that me and my CS roommate started playing together and I was like we what? We can shoot each other if I figure out how to network these systems together. So I went out. I bought a four port hub. I bought two network cards. I connected mine and Tom's computers together. We started beating the piss out of each other. He invited all of his friends over. I bought an eight port hub. This was, this was back before. I mean, this was like broadcasting and all the oddliness, port 6664, doom, all the things. I wired the. I wired the dorm room up for, effectively, a LAN party. Tom's proctor, his, his counselor, his guidance counselor for the university came in one day and saw all eight of us going at it with each other and they were like this is absolutely amazing, tom, we love what you've done for with the networking in this room. And he was like I didn't do this. It was, it was the psych major. The university hired me to rewire the entire CS department, all of the buildings, Nice. So. So I quickly got my A plus and my CCNA I. They then paid me the same amount that my tuition was for the year and I was like this is going to be far more lucrative than being a psychologist, so I immediately quit. I got my MCSE and the rest is history.

Chris Williams: 23:06

As my career went on like let's let's flash forward 20 years I have. I have gone up in the ranks. I went from, you know, solutions engineer to solutions architect, to enterprise architect. At the pinnacle of my pre DA career, I was an EA for WWT and I was. I was the one that was running these multimillion dollar projects at Fortune 100s and honestly, I kind of stop. I mean with with the exception of the stuff that I was doing in the user groups and on the podcast and on my my learning in public at night things Most of my daytime was counseling people.

Chris Williams: 23:44

It was. It was literally getting people to go get into their get along t shirts and make them figure out how to it's. It's stop being technical. My problems, the project problems that were the biggest ones, the hardest ones, were never technical. It was always two people that thought the other person was a fucking asshole and I'm not going to do what he says because screw him, yeah, and and it's it just turned into these pissing matches, and so I got a reputation for being injected into these projects that were on fire and everybody was not getting along and getting people to get along to the extent that they started calling me the therapist. And I was like screw that, I'm the cloud, I mean, and all of my gigs were cloud gigs. So I so that turned into the cloud therapist I then so so people started calling me the cloud therapist at worldwide. And then that just kind of snowballed and I was like that's actually pretty cool, I'll stick with that.

Chris Williams: 24:42

So then I actually I officially changed so my boss at worldwide. He was like Chris, you're in AWS, here we were at reinvent together, and he saw all of the hubbub and hoopla around being an AWS hero. So he said I want you to become a worldwide hero. How do for worldwide, what you are doing for AWS? And I said, okay, let me change my title. Give me a quarter of a million dollars and access to a bunch of speakers inside of AWS, inside of WTWT. And he said, okay, done.

Chris Williams: 25:15

And my goal was then to start figuring out how to inject WTWT speakers into all of the different user groups for AWS across the United States, because user group leaders need exactly two things they need speakers and they need money. And so I said if you give me speakers and money, I can make every single logo for every single user group across America say thank you, wwt, and really get the name out there. I then, three months later, left, but not before setting up that entire pipeline. I created a Python script that scraped all of Meetup for the most attended user groups with the most number of attendees and blah, blah, blah, and I had all the email addresses of all the users and then I had a book of folks inside of WWT that would have been great speakers, which I had been using for V Brownbag up until that point, because every time I go into a new company, I immediately start trying to find presenters for V Brownbag, because that's what I do, excuse me.

Chris Williams: 26:14

So the cloud therapist title was perfect for me because one, it draws people in. They're like I'm sorry, your title is what, and so then I get to go through all of that, which one tells customers that I know what I'm talking about and that I can get shit done. Two, engages folks that want to work with me on V Brownbag and present to get things going. And three, it's a unique title out there, so when I put that on stuff, people remember me yeah, that's it All done.

Alex Perkins: 26:44

That's an awesome story. That's good.

Chris Miles: 26:48

Yeah, that's true, that's yeah it's funny that it relates back to the fact that, like, the origin was just that you were making teams work together that, you know, hated each other at one point. Because I think it I think that is the most prominent thing I've seen across all the jobs that I've had is that, like the technology, if you put it in, like in perspective, it's a cake walk. It's always it's always forcing people to work together, which is the tough part.

Chris Williams: 27:14

The politics. 100%. I want to use this framework. Well, I want to use this framework. No, screw you, this one's easier, it's so. I mean, it's disingenuous that they call it soft skills, because they are far, far harder than hard skills.

Tim McConnaughy: 27:29

I mean technology. You know, generally speaking, works the same every time. Right, you follow the formula and technology spits out whatever the hell you put into it, right, it's people that suck.

Alex Perkins: 27:39

Yeah 100%.

Chris Williams: 27:42

I don't. I mean that very tongue-in-cheek. People don't suck it's, it's. People want to be heard. I mean, well, everybody wants to be heard. Everybody wants to be appreciated. Everybody has the angle that they're coming from. There's very few people at a company that are genuinely malicious and want to see the downfall of the company. Everybody wants to do what they think is the best and they also kind of want to be the person that was right. Everybody loves being right. So if you take all of those knowledge points and then apply them in an open and honest forum, with everybody present nine times out of 10, you can get where you need to go.

Tim McConnaughy: 28:20

Yeah, I think that's just good advice generally, not that even that's not even a tech thing, right, that's just a generally getting people to work together type of type of thing, and that's the irony of it.

Chris Williams: 28:32

I mean, I now use my old, rusty conflict resolution skills far more than I use my command line skills the full circle right Came all the way back to it, the circle life, yeah. Is Elden Junker going to start singing?

Chris Miles: 28:51

Yeah, he's we don't have the licensing funding.

Tim McConnaughy: 28:53

Yeah, sorry, sorry, we can't afford that.

Chris Williams: 28:56

We can get at least five seconds the circle. I'm not gonna sing.

Chris Miles: 29:00

So that I mean, all that being said, that's, that's really cool. I'm curious to hear how that's working for you over at Hashi, like, what kind of problems are you helping people solve at Hashi Corp? Because I think, like, like you said, like it's funny that your trajectory or your career was you started networking and then moved over to the other side. We would consider that moving to the dark side. Going from networking to anybody's admin, I'm surprised you're not crazy first of all, but he never did collab though.

Chris Miles: 29:30

So that's true, that's true, that's. That's the unforgivable part.

Tim McConnaughy: 29:34

No just kidding.

Alex Perkins: 29:35

We love it.

Chris Miles: 29:35

We love our collab folks out there. But yeah, I'm curious, what kind of complex problems are you helping people solve over at Hashi Corp Now that Hashi Corp has kind of like their product set has obviously reached a high level of maturity to the point where people forking things off to maintain certain aspects of it? Yeah, I'm just curious to hear how that's going for you. What kind of problems are people seeing today in cloud with use of Hashi Corp products that you're helping with?

Chris Williams: 30:04

So my folks I'm the DA manager for North America, so the team, each one of the members of the team, have different angles, different tool set, expertise. They come from a different background so there's no one angle that we tackle. Our folks come at the problems that our customers and that are the community are having from the angle that they know how to help them. From my perspective is going back to learning. I love to help people learn how to scale up. Recently, another one of the AWS heroes, andrew Brown, and I we did this Terraform bootcamp for Terraform beginner bootcamp, the hilariously named Terraform beginner bootcamp.

Tim McConnaughy: 30:50

It was so good, but you are so right, it was no beginner bootcamp man. Oh my god, it was great, though it was really really good.

Chris Williams: 30:58

It's great. So we are actually now in the process of creating the Terraform. So Hashi Corp is now going to be releasing the Terraform professional certification that's going to be coming out in I'm going to say, april you heard it here first Tentatively, ga for April, and Andrew and I are currently in the process of creating a Terraform professional bootcamp designed to help you pass the professional certification. That's awesome. We will be a little bit more rigorous, okay. So let me put an asterisk on the bootcamp. If you took the bootcamp, chances are really really, really good that you are going to pass the Terraform associate certification, not because of the content of the bootcamp, but because of the fire hose of information that is thrust upon you as a result of being in the bootcamp. I think week two we are making a custom go provider. That is not beginner bootcamp material by any stretch of the imagination. Kudos to Andrew for going so far off the rails, but it was good. Real world experience. It was fantastic real world Terraform experience.

Tim McConnaughy: 32:11

I took the bootcamp. I thought it was awesome. I learned way more about Git than I ever thought I would learn from a Terraform bootcamp, which was actually good. And I have to admit I was sitting there whichever week it was I don't remember if it was two or three or what it was we were building our own providers. I was sitting there hacking go together watching the video, and I was just like get in my ass man, this is bullshit.

Chris Williams: 32:36

Yep, Okay. So if there are folks in the audience listening right now and they want to pass the Terraform associate certification, do the bootcamp but also go through my free code camp article. So at the same time that we were doing the bootcamp, I wrote an article for free code camp on my study notes for passing the associate certification and I then went and sat the the exam using my notes and I passed easily. So those two things combined will definitely get you over the top and you'll pass your associate. We are now working on professional. That is in the works. As soon as we get the finalized syllabus from education, then we will be starting to crank out the videos for that as well. Awesome.

Tim McConnaughy: 33:21

Chris, you've got yours right You're Terraform associate right Terraform associate.

Chris Miles: 33:26

I actually just renewed it like maybe a month or two ago. I will say it's a good, appropriately labeled associate exam.

Chris Williams: 33:36

Yeah, because let's be honest, it's a little easy. It's a little easy, yes it is.

Chris Miles: 33:40

I'm glad you said it so I don't have to say it, but it is a little easy, especially if you're someone that works day to day with Terraform. You probably that's a cakewalk, but you know it's. But the thing is that what Tim just said that I think I really like is that you learned more about Git in a Terraform beginner bootcamp than you did Terraform, because I actually think Terraform is that easy to learn, like the, the, the concepts that that you need to apply to use Terraform to provision infrastructure as code is relatively easy.

Chris Miles: 34:14

The issue is in the real world. It's typically not just ran ad hoc like that Exactly. Incorporated into these, you know pipelines that are pipelines that are typically deploying, you know apps and you know used by developers. It's not for deploying infrastructure. When you try to do it with infrastructure, it gets very, very complicated. So I'm it's actually I think it's a better thing that you start with that and then kind of lean into Terraform afterward.

Chris Williams: 34:41

So Andrew actually just released his GitHub Foundations certification thing. He gave me a, he gave me a free link to the course, so I'm about to go blaze through that. Hopefully, it's not all about PHP and Ruby and it's actually about GitHub. Shout out to Andrew, I love you. It's so true, though, and yeah, so, and that is. It's weird because, you know, being being that old sysadmin, turned EA, turned cloud therapist, git was never like high on my radar, but if you're a developer, that's literally like step two. You know, pick up a program language and then pick up Git. So there's there's this chasm that I am trying to help other in my role as a DA at Hashtag Corp, I am trying to help other folk like me cross that chasm and figure it out, and you know content like Andrew stuff is very valuable for that.

Alex Perkins: 35:36

Did you? You said you're the DA manager, but did you start as the manager? Did you start as one of the kind of like specialties?

Chris Williams: 35:45

So I have never been a DA Interesting. I was an, I was an EA at Worldwide when I started having a conversation with my now boss at re-invent and she walked up to me and and we had known each other from a from a prior past and she was like hey, chris. And I was like hey, melissa, how you doing? And she's like hey, do you want to come work for Hashtag Corp? I am never not not looking Like if, if, if somebody comes up to me and says, hey, we've got a job opportunity for you to taste test peanut coladas for a million dollars an hour on St John. All you got to do is stick your toes in the sand. I'm, I'm, I'm never not, I'm, never, not, not looking. So I said what do you got? What's, what's, what's going on, melissa? And she said would you like to be? As she said, behold my, my job board of opportunities. Because she'd written everything up on on the whiteboard at the conference and there was a DA role and there's a DA manager role. And I was like and, and I had, I have friends that are DA's and I was like well, tell me about the DA role. And she was like no, I'm going to tell you about the DA manager role, because that's where I want you. And and I said that's a horrible idea because I've never even been a DA before.

Chris Williams: 36:58

And so we went back and forth, not not on the floor, but like later on I spent about two and a half three hours trying to convince her why it would be a terrible idea to hire me, and every con that I came up with she was like actually, that's a pro, and this is why I said I've never been a DA. And she said that's not true. You've been a DA at night, for free, for 15 years and you just haven't been getting paid for it. And I was like, oh, that hurts. So then I said, well, I haven't been a manager in a very long period of time.

Chris Williams: 37:32

She's like that is also not true because you have been the EA on these multimillion dollar projects running minimum of 20 people for you know, for years. You can. You can manage people, you can sign people's time cards, you're not a moron, and you know. The list went on and I was like you know, set reason 17, why you should never hire Chris Williams. And she was in false. She just slapped, swatted down all of my, all of my things, all of my protests, and then the final nail in the coffin was she was going to pay me more to do my night hobby for Haschicorp than I was making as an EA at worldwide and I was like sold.

Tim McConnaughy: 38:12

Yeah, it's not a hard one to hard sell probably.

Chris Williams: 38:17

So I came on. I talked with all the members of the team. I actually had a number of friends inside of Hashtag Corp Ironically, chris, a lot of ex-worldwiders, joe Weber, sean Doyle a lot of really smart folks that whose opinions I trusted and they're like yes, you'd love it over here, you would be amazing in that role. I talked to some of my DA friends over at AWS, like Emily Freeman and Linda and Brooke Jamison and those folks, and they're like I was afraid. I was afraid because it was going to be a career change and I didn't know if I would be a good DA. And they're like shut up, just go do it because you'd be amazing. You've been doing this forever and you just don't know. And they were right. I came over. It's been almost a year to the day that I got into the role and I still wake up every morning going. I cannot believe that they are paying me to do this. Are you kidding me?

Tim McConnaughy: 39:11

Yeah, Any minute. Now they're going to bust down the door and be like the jig is up.

Chris Williams: 39:15

We have seen through your ruse. Finally, you fraud. Get the hell out of here. Give us our money back. I'm waiting for it. I fully expect it.

Tim McConnaughy: 39:24

That's great man. I'm glad to hear that it's been so successful for you and that you enjoy it. That's increasingly rare in this industry. I can say so not for myself, of course. I'm having the time of my life, but, yeah, definitely increasingly rare.

Chris Williams: 39:43

I mean, I don't know who's listening to this one, but it's early 2024. Right now, things are kind of shitty in tech. There's a number of layoffs happening, ceos are not feeling the values or they're forcing people to come back into the office. If somebody's listening to this in 2050 and you hear the term why RTO ended the world, that's returned to office.

Tim McConnaughy: 40:06

We just recorded an episode about the state of affairs, as it were.

Chris Williams: 40:12

Yeah, there's some good takes out there. I mean, honestly, the take that I go for is these companies got into like these long term leases and they have these buildings that they're just bleeding money out of and they're trying to figure out a way to reduce headcount because they overhired during the pandemic and, instead of genuinely being honest with people and just saying this is the situation and we need to, they don't want to lay people off because that's quote unquote bad. So they're making people who live in Virginia RTO to their closest office, which happens to be in Austin. If you can't make it, well, then we're going to pip you and they're just being dicks about it.

Chris Miles: 40:54

Yeah, just let them weed themselves out.

Chris Williams: 40:56

And that is an actual example.

Chris Miles: 40:57

That's an actual real time example. Yeah, totally believe that.

Tim McConnaughy: 41:01

I definitely know some employers who have I guess all better ads enforced the old RTO thing in a way that's not even possible to really comply with for most people, right? So they're like oh, that's too bad, see ya.

Chris Miles: 41:16

Yeah, it happened with me, Like I did this thing in 2019 where I moved to Tulsa, oklahoma, for an incentive for remote workers, and obviously that was in 2019. So the next year there was a lot of people trying to get in on that after the fact right, because they had just gone remote, they want to move to somewhere cheaper. So there's a lot of people like, oh well, I'm allowed to work remote now and let's move to Oklahoma. And then, like within like six to eight months, when people started coming back, they were like, yeah, you got to come back, but they've fully let people move away halfway across the country, and only to tell them that they have to undo that.

Tim McConnaughy: 41:58

Yeah, I remember all the oh yeah, you can move wherever you want, we'll let you move, and unless you move somewhere crazy, we won't worry about changing your pay and all this other stuff, right. And then, yeah, you're supported. And then like, yeah, two years later, oh no, sorry actually.

Chris Williams: 42:16

Is this a safe space where I can go on my pro union rant, or no, let's just go.

Tim McConnaughy: 42:21

Oh man, you would not be the first. All I can say is you would not be the first.

Chris Miles: 42:25

You should have been on the last episode.

Tim McConnaughy: 42:27

We should have had you in for the last episode as well.

Chris Williams: 42:30

I've lived in a lot of different countries and we get some things right and we get a couple of things wrong. But the things that we get wrong a couple pretty big wrongs.

Tim McConnaughy: 42:40

Yeah, that's. The problem is that the few things we get wrong are like glaringly large wrongs, and that is an entire other podcast. Yeah, yeah, we'll bring you back for that one? Yes, we will.

Chris Williams: 42:55

What's wrong with the US by cloud therapist Chris Williams.

Tim McConnaughy: 43:00

Step one, a 20th part series.

Chris Williams: 43:05

Hold on, I got my book ready.

Tim McConnaughy: 43:08

Chapter one Back to tech.

Chris Williams: 43:10

Hey everybody, how are we doing tonight?

Chris Miles: 43:12

All right. Well, yeah, I think this has been a great conversation, but we should probably wrap it up at some point. So, let's, let's, let's real this in a bit. And I know, chris, it's been. It's very sad to go, but I think, as we've learned, we'll probably have you back.

Tim McConnaughy: 43:26

Well, I'll be back at some point anyway, yeah, I would love to be on again.

Chris Williams: 43:30

Yeah, we only scratch the surface.

Chris Miles: 43:32

Exactly there's. There's plenty more to talk about, so, yeah, so, once again, thanks for coming on. Cables Clouds man, we really appreciate it. Obviously, we'll have to, you know, do more with, potentially more with the brown bag in the upcoming months years etc. But.

Chris Williams: 43:49

I would love to have you all on.

Chris Miles: 43:50

Yeah, it'd be awesome. Crash yeah, we will absolutely crash. We love crashing parties. We do it all the time. So I guess with that I'll leave you any, any closing thoughts or anything you want to plug before we wrap up on it.

Chris Williams: 44:05

I mean so we've got the for those interested. We have the Terraform professional certification coming out pretty soon. So Andrew and I will be creating some content around that. I will also be making some videos around vault and GitHub foundations and you know, as I continue learning, I will do it live, with all the bumps and bruises, and then share that out so that other folks can help level up to my big phrases. All boats rise with the tide and I'm a firm believer in that and I appreciate what you guys do to also help people elevate their game.

Tim McConnaughy: 44:38

Thanks, yeah, rising tide floats all boats, or something like that Totally.

Chris Williams: 44:43

That sounds better, yet I'll go with that. I stole that from you, tim. It's all yours.

Chris Miles: 44:48

We've generated a few ideas on this one, so that's good, all right. Well, with that being said, we will wrap up. This has been yet another episode of the cables to clouds podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please reach out, let us know. Subscribe, like hit all the buttons. You know every, every button you can hit. Just hit all of them, please. If you didn't like today's episode, call Tim on his cell phone personally, yeah, and talk to him about you've all got the number, just don't.

Tim McConnaughy: 45:16

Don't stop pretending you don't, so just call me.

Chris Miles: 45:18

I'll give you Tim's phone number. You can call him and then we'll. We'll address that privately.

Alex Perkins: 45:22

So eight, six, seven, five, three, oh nine, right.

Chris Williams: 45:24

That's so on.

Chris Miles: 45:25

That's Jenny, all right Stage name Sounds good, All right guys.

Chris Williams: 45:31

I appreciate it.

Chris Miles: 45:32

It's so weird the outro that keeps on going forever and now we're actually saying goodbye. Cheers everyone, Bye. Hi everyone. It's Chris and this has been the cables to clouds podcast. Thanks for tuning in today. If you enjoyed our show, please subscribe to us in your favorite podcatcher, as well as subscribe and turn on notifications for our YouTube channel to be notified of all our new episodes. Follow us on socials at cables to clouds. You can also visit our website for all of the show notes at cables to cloudscom. Thanks again for listening and see you next time.