Narrator: You're listening to the humans of DevOps podcast, a

podcast focused on advancing the humans of DevOps through skills,

knowledge, ideas and learning, or the SK il framework.

Jonathan Schneider: I wonder if others feel the same way, but I

just know that I missed the experience of being able to sit

next to someone not necessarily pair programming, one keyboard

and one monitor but being engaged throny in solving a

problem together.

Jason Baum: Hey, everyone, it's Jason Baum, Director of Member

experience at DevOps Institute. And this is the humans of DevOps

podcast. Welcome back. Hope you had a great week. I am very

excited for today's episode. I know I say that every week. And

it's true. I'm excited for every episode, believe it or not, I'm

a very excitable person. But today's episode I'm like, extra

excited for this is it's completely outside of what I

would say my reality. What I've had in the past, you know, my

regular reality. This week, we're going to step into virtual

reality. The Metaverse and we're not in no one's sponsoring this.

So sorry, Zack, you don't get any credit for this. But with me

today, my guests, I'm going to talk about who my guest is

shortly. But let me paint you a picture. The image of the

developer is sitting alone at his or her desk headphones on

coding at all hours of the night. But the reality is that

there is significant collaboration and software

development, which involves multiple software programmers

and architects writing and editing diagrams and code

together on a whiteboard. And this type of work just doesn't

lend itself to share Google Docs or Zoom video of a whiteboard.

This virtual barrier to collaboration can result in

wasted time ineffective frameworks for software code,

and poor execution. So faced with this problem, our guest

today Jonathan Schneider, who's the co founder and CEO of

moderne, viewed virtual reality as a potential way to overcome

these issues of the remote workforce in software

development. How did he do it? Using inexpensive headsets and

new VR software, the modern team is now conducting daily 30

minute stand up meetings in VR, which leads to hours of code

creation involving the best ideas and approaches of the

team, the quality of the code has already improved. Jonathan

has a number of new ideas for further improving. And guess

what he's here to tell us some of that some of his ideas on

today's episode. So this is going to be I turn up the

volume, because you're gonna want to hear this, trust me.

Jonathan was nice enough to send me a headset, and I got the jump

in the virtual reality. We're going to talk about that. But

first, let me tell you about Jonathan. So prior to co

founding moderne, Jonathan lead the engineering effort around

large scale automated code refactoring at Netflix, where he

founded the open source open rewrite project on the spring

team at Pivotal. He led the site reliability engineering team and

founded the popular Java metrics library micrometre. He's the

author of O'Reilly's SRE with Java microservices. And

Jonathan, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I'm

excited to do this. I hope you are.

Jonathan Schneider: I absolutely am. I'm just I, there's so many

things we have to talk about. I'm not even sure we're going to

start but we're gonna, we're gonna make an attempt here. And

we

Jason Baum: neither that's the fun. We're just gonna dive in.

And I always start the podcast by saying, are you ready to get

human? And in this instance, of the humans of DevOps, I'm almost

kind of maybe we should get virtual. No, no, we should we

should get I mean, and it's so funny because Jonathan, this is

the first time we are speaking to each other. And you know, we

don't usually do a video component of this podcast, but

we do for those listeners and breaking down the fourth wall.

But we do have our videos on I am talking to you and I can see

you. And this is my first time seeing you in real life.

Jonathan Schneider: Right and your avatar first.

Jason Baum: Yeah, you met my avatar. First I met your avatar

first in the in the virtual world. And my goodness, it's

jarring. It's so different. I feel like I know your your

cartoon version. So much better. So welcome to the podcast. Are

you ready to get human ish? Let's get you in. So, Jonathan,

first, I guess the biggest question is why right? Why? Why

virtual reality? Why did you choose virtual reality for your

team?

Jonathan Schneider: It's a social art really, is what it

is. It's definitely a form of art, but it's definitely a

social one as well. Multiple people, like you mentioned

earlier work together on the same project. It evolves with

multiple people work Working on it has to be maintained by

multiple people working on it. And so just any, anytime there's

going to be a new opportunity to engage in a different way, I

think we have to give it a shot. And I was pretty skeptical when

I first you know, I encountered the I think I, you know, I

watched Zuckerberg announcement of the name change the meta, and

the three minute presentation he gave where he jumped into a room

and I thought, No way, right? It didn't make any sense to me. But

I think you need somebody that you trust to kind of say, give

this a shot. And for me, I was listening to another podcast or

tetra, and they were talking about VR, and they were talking

more about more of the business where, you know, we feel like

virtual reality is actually going to start in the, in the

enterprise, you know, with companies shipping out these

devices, and then move more to consumer. And I thought, well,

if this is going to be one of these, you know, changes that

happens in the way we work, where you know, you can be the

first company adopting a PC, then we need to be one of those

companies. So we need to give it a shot. That's where we just

made this low cost investment.

Jason Baum: Yeah, it's extremely forward thinking but like you

said, it's low cost investment to at least try. So I think that

was, you know, that's, that's, I guess, very forward thinking of

you to do it. And, you know, because it's one of those things

now that having observed it and lived in in the virtual reality

and participated, it is one of those things that for me, I

didn't get it until I put on the headset, yeah, I really didn't

understand it. It's hard to, it's very hard. But once I

popped into the we met, and we sat in a work, it looked like an

office, in a conference room, you pop in, you know, I popped

into a team meeting that you had, and I got to meet your co

workers. And we were sitting at a conference table, looking at a

whiteboard, or actually, there was also the circuit, we could

meet in a circle, you could change the room line layout, but

it felt like I was very present. Like you were all present. And

we were actually in the same space sharing a space to gather,

which I guess for me is my biggest takeaway is, I haven't

really had that experience in a very long time, I haven't met in

person with people in quite a bit. And that's something that

you just can't get from a Zoom meeting.

Jonathan Schneider: And you do really feel like somebody is

present next to you. There's spatial audio. So if they're to

your right, they sound like they're to your right, if

they're behind you the sound like they're behind you. It's

differential and volume, it's, you see gestures from their

facial expressions and body movements and hand gestures,

it's it's very realistic in that fashion, all while looking

cartoonish

Jason Baum: at this, right. It looks cartoonish. But someone

had pointed out, one of your team members have pointed out

that even though it was cartoonish, it felt more real

than than zoom. And, and I I do tend to agree with that now is

that even though like, for example, we're having this

conversation, I'm looking at you, and we're over zoom, again,

breaking down that fourth, fourth wall, but I think it's

important in this conversation, I actually felt like we were

closer in space. And it was a different conversation. In a

virtual world, where I felt like, you know, you could get up

and you could walk to the whiteboard. And all the focus

was on you. And everyone was paying attention to what you had

to say. And you could lead a conversation you could draw on

the whiteboard, and everyone's present. And I think the the

being present piece again, at least to me was was so

different, is that the impact that you've seen on like your

team meetings, for example, how has it impacted those?

Jonathan Schneider: I do, I remember one of the first, you

know, group meetings of more than two people, I suppose that

we had in there. And you can have a, a, you know, visual of

your screen, your laptop screen in front of you, you can have a

keyboard in front of you. And you could absolutely be typing

away on that, you know, on on your computer and doing other

work. And I think we do that on zoom all the time, right,

because I can have my video on but I not really watching it, I

could be doing some background work and still appear the same

way. But it just really occurred to me that they're in that room.

If I'm typing on my keyboard, and my colleague to my left is

talking, they can see me typing on my keyboard and looking at my

screen instead of looking at them. So it actually kind of

forces you in many ways. Just the the social norm would be

that you look at the person that's that's speaking to you

and you can't fake it like you can in this 2d world. You

actually have to turn and face them and give them your full

attention.

Jason Baum: Yeah, for the audience at that's, that's

fascinating. Yeah, I think that is a big piece is we don't have

eye contact in zoom, right? Unless you're one on one. And

even if there's eye contact, you don't really have eye contact,

because it depends on where the camera is depends on where you

are, you're looking at yourself, too. There's so many things that

get in the way. But in the virtual world, you actually do,

it does feel like you're making eye contact with people. You

could shake your head, you could give hand gestures, thumbs up,

thumbs down air quotes, all the things that yeah, I almost want

to go back in now and test it with you guys. Can we give a

fist bump? I think or a high five? I don't I don't know.

Shake hands. Yeah, seems like it. And that is that is a

missing piece of conversation is eye contact. That's right. Yeah.

So

Jonathan Schneider: the gestures are accurate enough that you

really can tell what people intend through body gestures. In

the very first time, I was in the room and somebody else

joined from the outside, they joined when and just for the

Odyssey understand, somebody else can join without a VR

headset. And to the people in the room, it appears like

they're just on television screen inside the room. It's

like a zoom, like a zoom, like a grid of people just like zoom in

the room. And everybody else is, you know, physically in the

room. So that's, that's how that works. And so that was my first

interaction with somebody in VR, I was actually in the VR Room.

And the team member joining me was actually through this like

zoom like interface. And of course, audio wasn't working. I

mean, we aren't, we're all used to shorted zoom in our audio

doesn't work. And our mic doesn't work or whatever. And so

I could hear him, but he couldn't hear me. And so he's

saying, can you hear me? And so I had no way of communicating

with him because he couldn't hear me. So I just started

nodding my head. Yes. And I didn't even think about it. I

just it was my natural. That's what I would do. You know, I was

and, and he said, Oh, this is a weird moment where I can see

your cartoonish avatar, not happy, but I can't hear what

you're saying.

Jason Baum: How surreal is it? Yeah, you could give him a

thumbs up too. Absolutely. Yeah. So so how has it like is it

improved? Because of the difference of how communication

is happening? Is that what's making it more productive for

your team? What's the direct tie to your to the improvement? Do

you think?

Jonathan Schneider: I think we just a relay, one of them from

last week, I was, there was a problem that was confronting us,

you know, kind of a mini production outage. And I joined

one of my colleagues also named John in the room, and we just

were working on this problem. And so I had projected my screen

on the whiteboard, just it's kind of like a massive screen is

basically what you see in the whiteboard. And John sitting

next to me looking at his computer screen, he can see my

screen on the whiteboard. So it's kind of like we're sitting

side by side. And we're working on this problem, which is

already cool. And already a unique feeling. But another team

member of ours, Kevin just popped into the room thinking

now maybe I could help. And quickly he finds that, you know,

we're really engrossed in the problem, he doesn't really

understand the the detail of it necessarily. And so he just

started working on whatever he was working on. But he's

remained in the room. And he was we could see him just type in

way over there kind of minding his own business. But

interestingly, like he was you kind of whenever you're present

with someone, you gain somewhat through osmosis, like some

knowledge about what's happening, even if you're not

like fully paying attention. I've never had that experience.

On a on a zoom, you know, you could be screen sharing, but you

know, I can't be also working on something and watching the

screen share at the same time. And here. It's just that's just

kind of the default.

Jason Baum: It's almost like walking into a conference room

in the office and just even in just plopping yourself down,

right. And maybe there's another meeting going on, if it's an

open door, you know, to the conference room, sometimes that

happens, you walk in you sit down, and in a way it kind of we

didn't talk about this, but maybe it's almost like a silo

breaker in some respects because someone could be having that

caught you you're in your teammate could have been having

a conversation, maybe Kevin could have said, You know what,

actually, you know, this didn't happen because of X and throw

in, you know, a solution that you would have taken like two

weeks probably to get to over just zoom for example, he would

have to plan a meeting meet about it.

Jonathan Schneider: There's a dynamic and I think it's a

similar. So I spent many years in the Army and very early on

when I was training with this group. The officer that was

leading this Training we did he liked running a lot. So he would

do a run every morning a long run. And he just you could self

select into an a group, B group or C group. And you know, it's

just depend on your speed. And so People that are really

competitive or really strong are going to be in a house of people

are not going to see. And, you know, I, I hadn't done a lot of

like, played sports much before that. So I like, fell right into

the be very competitive person but not clearly not in a group

yet. And I like really wanting to be, you know, in this age

group. And I remember him saying like, you know, if you want to

be in a group, start every day in a group, and we're all

running the same route, so we just go with them as long as you

possibly can. And when you can't take it anymore, you just fall

back to B and run with B, the remainder of the time, right?

But then every day, strive to go a little bit further and a

little bit further. And one day, you're gonna get to the halfway

mark and wonder you're gonna get to the three quarter mark.

Actually, I feel like there's a similar dynamic in in soft,

there's so many skills to learn, and so much about how we think

and how we reason about problems and how we hypothesize, make and

test hypotheses very quickly, that I think a more junior

member of the team actually. Like just being present helps

them feel like they can kind of like run with a group for a

little while, and then it's theirs, they could absolutely

just like start typing something else, right, kind of fall back

to me. And that's I think there's that dynamic as well.

Jason Baum: Do you find that some people who might be less

vocal on Zoom suddenly become more vocal in the VR Room?

Jonathan Schneider: What I've noticed is, you know, is they

don't notice, you know, that somebody that's very quiet on

Zoom, also winds up being very quiet room. So it's, yeah, in

many ways reflective of their personalities.

Jason Baum: Yeah, it what's, what's interesting about the VR

space is, you know, there, with Zoom, we're very, we're opening

up our world, you can have a fake background, I use a fake

background. And that's, you know, it looks fake. And, you

know, you see yourself and it's not perfect, and we don't all

have green screens. But it's 2d, in the in the virtual world,

which is obviously 3d. It feels more realistic, even though

we're we're looking at cartoons, but we're also not letting

ourselves are we, we don't have to look at ourselves the whole

time. You know, in zoom, you feel the Zoom fatigue, right?

That doesn't exist in the VR world. I noticed it doesn't, it

doesn't feel like that. Anyway, I'm so engaged in what everybody

else is talking about it I'm so engaged in the conversation and

being present, that it doesn't feel like I'm experiencing that,

do you find that your meetings are shorter longer, you know, do

you tend to just get carried away being in there.

Jonathan Schneider: I think one useful feature right now is the

battery life is not amazing, you can get about an hour and a

half, maybe on and it is wireless. So in many ways, it's

good, because it kind of limits you charge it very quickly and

be back in again. But we tend to use it in a very ad hoc fashion,

just you know, will pop in there will pop out. Just know. And

it's almost like I know, there's been a debate that's raged for

forever, and probably always will about whether cubicles or

offices or open floor plan is a better arrangement. And the

arguments are obvious, you know, open floor plan, more

collaboration, office cubicle, more quiet time privacy sort of

thing. Feel like in many ways here, we kind of get the best of

both worlds, it's when you want the open floor plan, you pop

into the room, when you want the private space, you just simply

take off the headset and you're in his private as in spaces you

want to be Yeah, for me, I'm very social. So I have always

done this, I've always I have a 13 inch MacBook not a 16 inch

MacBook because I'm move all the time, I'll pick up the laptop

and I'll go to a coffee shop and then a library and then another

coffee shop and then you just like to be surrounded. But I

know not everybody is that way you really get to choose your

alternative reality outside of the virtual reality, whatever it

may be.

Jason Baum: Do you have office hours, like standing office

hours in the VR environment? I think that

Jonathan Schneider: would be wise. And we haven't formalized

that yet. But I know that you know, we've had we have had some

you know, early experiences or something like popped in and

nobody was there. And so you know, when do you know to join

and so I think that would be really helpful.

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activation. Yeah, we were throwing around some ideas of

uses of the VR Room because I feel like there's so many and

you know, when we were when I was giving my intro here, you

must have a ton that you've you know, through your experience,

how long have you guys been using it?

Jonathan Schneider: We? So I'll explain also how we rolled it

out and first headset in November, again, very skeptical.

I'm not a gamer, I don't like I haven't done a lot of these

things. I wouldn't actually be inclined to it. But I bought

one. And it was sent to my and I put it on because I had heard

like, well, there's some rough edges. How rough for these rough

edges? Like how well can I see the text on my screen? Does it

make you dizzy, you know, these sort of things. So just bought

one there about $300 $300 investment. The first person to

join me in the room actually joined remotely through the Zoom

like interface. So that was our first test of that level of

communication. Then I bought two more. And so didn't roll it

immediately out to the whole team bought two more that group

that first three people, like figured out some of the

mechanics of this, how do you tune fine tune the display? How

do you get the software working? Do we get extra peripherals, you

know, these sort of things? And, you know, then we rolled it out

to the next group. So just did it incrementally. So November is

when we started that process. And I would say about you know,

Christmas is when we started shipping them out the whole

team.

Jason Baum: Okay, so it's very new. Yeah. And how do the

employees feel this? Do you feel like because I think we're in

the middle of everyone knows this, you know, this is such a

strange time when you can have employees from anywhere in the

world, you can find any job and you it doesn't matter where you

live anymore. You can work, you know, in Shanghai and be in New

York and, and vice versa. Do you? Do you think this gives you

somewhat of a competitive edge? Do employees really like this as

a perk?

Jonathan Schneider: I think it's exactly as you'd expect. There's

like a mixture of feelings about it. And you want to be sensitive

to that there's so there's some people, they're going to be

like, oh, I want to try this right away, like, you know, and

some that like, you know, are gonna it's gonna take a while to

you know, like, suspend disbelief. I think usually when

somebody just for a moment suspends disbelief and comes in

that tends to be a moment where they're like, Oh, I see where

this is, you know, I like it's just a very different experience

than you would expect.

Jason Baum: Suspending belief is gas so I want to go in with an

open mind I had no idea what to expect my only prior dabble in

virtual reality I was telling you is it was a virtual boy when

that came out whenever in the 90s by Nintendo and it was very

not virtual and it was just an eyesore made you sick after like

10 minutes of putting it out. So that was my only experience with

virtual This is not Virtual Boy, this is this is legit virtual

reality. I guess the definition right virtually I was looking

this up a virtual reality is truly the suspense is is the

departure your brain's departure from reality and and being in a

in what it perceives as another place. And I after putting on

that headset, it is real, you feel presence, you feel like you

are there, I had to be really careful because I'm in a small

office, all over the place. And it's very easy to walk into the

wall or knock something like they have safety measures, you

got to set your boundary and all these others and there's pass

through so you can actually see your desk or see the wall that

you're about to hit. Sometimes it doesn't work. I gotta say I

did knock over a few things while getting up to the lectern

or whatever. But I think having that open mindset, you're 100%

right, I for one, after coming in and doing it for the first

time can't see how you wouldn't at least be like this is

different. This feels different.

Jonathan Schneider: It's different. And I think, you

know, like resolution could be a little bit better latency could

be a little bit better. These are the typical like this very

much is first generation PC, but it's like viable at this point.

I feel like enough that we do spend a certain number of hours

every week in it by choice. And I can imagine the next next, you

know, generation really being the one that's really hard to

resist at that point. So it's, that's, I think that's the state

of it. I think the next generation is coming out April

or something like that. So just right around the corner. And I

expect that's kind of just it's, it's definitely going this way.

Jason Baum: Yeah, immediately, when we're in there. We're like,

Oh, I wonder if we can have side conversations, it'd be great if

there could be breakout rooms would be great. If there could,

there's the door that doesn't move. We were joking. I was

like, I wish I could George Costanza out of the room, you

know, like, waved everybody and then peace. You know, or, you

know, I think for events, there's a whole world that is, I

don't know, I know, you can watch concerts and and I was

looking at some of the other things that you could do with

it. But that's not really the event, I'm thinking of, I'm

thinking of networking events, like actually going into the

room and tapping someone on the shoulder and interrupting a

conversation, things we just don't have in virtual reality,

or I'm sorry, in reality, with Zoom.

Jonathan Schneider: Yeah, if you know, the next Java user group,

I do want to do, I think, present from this actually just

open the invite anybody with a headset to join, and then

everybody else can join the other zoom sort of thing. So

it's like, I think it could be an interesting way of presenting

and be more connected to your, to your audience. We were

talking about something which, you know, you know, earlier,

which I had an experience years ago, where a colleague of mine

Deshawn, Carter, you know, who lived in Kansas City, just put a

number of, you know, engineer, sort of acquaintances of his on

a bus, and drove them across the state of reserves, about six

hour drive to St. Louis, to just go to a meetup group. And it was

like a weird, elementary school field trip almost where like,

you know, we stopped at a gas station halfway. So you got 10

minutes to go to the restroom and get, you know, food and

stuff like that, you got to be back on the bus. And there was

this, like, the cultivation of the conversations and

relationships that occurred just on that like six hour bus trip

across state and back, actually lasted for months or years

beyond that. I think there's a similar opportunity here where,

you know, we've actually had customer engineer, join us in

our room, in our workspace, no matter where they are, and just

be present with us, we may be solving a problem with them,

sometimes they come back. And you know, it's exciting enough

for us to have one customer engineer in there with us, what

I'm really excited about is when two or three or five from

different companies are there, because then they're sharing

ideas with each other as well. That's just that I just want to

be fly on the wall as they share their challenges and problems

with one another as well.

Jason Baum: Yeah, you can have focus groups in there. You could

have like, we were talking like product onboarding meetings. I

was I actually saw for, you know, an issue that a lot of

companies have right now is like, is employee onboarding

because of the virtual workforce? You feel isolated?

environment to go to? Right? Yeah, it's, it's pretty

fascinating. You know, what, what would you say are the

biggest benefits of VR other than what we've been discussing,

Jonathan Schneider: I wonder if others feel the same way. But I

just know that I missed the experience of being able to sit

next to someone not necessarily pair programming, one keyboard

and one monitor, but just being able to glance over at the

monitor next to me, and be engaged really and solving a

problem together. That's actually what I was hoping to

find in this room, which was that if we were all in a line

that I would be able to see the monitor of the person next to

me, and they are thinking privacy or so you actually can,

it's just like a ghost sort of transparent view. But any one

person can present their monitor to the front. And that really

does give you that experience of being able to glance over. And

that's for developers, I think that's really key to be able to

do that.

Jason Baum: Yeah. And we're talking to a mixture of deaf

people ops people, DevOps people. So what would you say to

them, you know, as far as like, what VR can do for them with

regards to the code quality and productivity just in general?

Jonathan Schneider: Well, it's, it's interesting. Now, I'd say

like so modern, you know, just as a little bit of background,

we are actually a developer tools company. So we do

automated source code repair. You mentioned this thing about

refactoring from Netflix, and it's exactly as we write recipes

that automatically go and modernize your code or patch

security vulnerabilities or these sorts of things. It seems

like a pretty magical technology but It started with, actually, I

was working for engineering tools team, the operations team

team, at Netflix and to be effective, the most effective

you can be as part of a central team, you need to be like an

ally, or alongside of the developer, which is really your

customer in many ways in that environment. And so how can you

be closer to them? How can you join them where they are? How

can you be, you know, participatory, Netflix was a

very difficult culture and a really eye opening one to be

part of a central operations team, because they have this

freedom responsibility culture, which basically meant, you know,

a central team could impose no constraints and what product

engineers did. Now imagine being a security engineer there and

saying, like I know of a particular vulnerability, the

easiest way to like, or the first thing we all think is I'm

going to break the build pipeline, if you you know, don't

pass a certain date, right? Or I'm going to, you know, not, I'm

going to put gates up. And here they were talking about building

guardrails, instead of gates, you know, how do we build an

experience that keeps the developer going down this path,

and a lot of it's just being present with them communicating

with them. For this particular problem that our company now

works on, which again, is around application modernization or

security vulnerability patching, we would be trying to push

through some initiative. And I would try to generate reports

and dashboards and views for the developers to understand the

current state and, and communicate what our intent

state was. And I didn't find it to be very actionable, like,

people just wouldn't move forward. And I would go in and

abuse them and say, What can we do to help you come along with

this on this initiative? And they say, Well, if you do it for

me, I'm happy to do it. You know, and that's, this is where

automation comes from, but like, doing it for them means, you

know, both providing the tooling and also being present with them

in their environment to help them along.

Jason Baum: Yeah, I think that that being present in there,

right, that's what we talked about with VR. So I'm going to

ask you a question that I saw come up. It made me think about

VR, because I just experienced it. It's Do you think this is a

fad? Is VR a fad? Or is VR the future?

Jonathan Schneider: I think, if you rewind to middle of last

year, I would have said VR was the fad, but augmented reality

was the future. I really thought that's how it would go that I

could totally imagine, like, discarding my physical monitor,

and instead, you know, developing a more dynamic sort

of fungible like, AR experience. I think, now, I believe it's the

opposite. And I'm surprised to hear myself say that, but I

think AR is, is less useful, when when we're confronted with

the possibility that we have with VR, I do think VR is going

to ultimately win. And I think one of the really interesting

concepts the, how I see this going, really, is that it's

gonna start in the business. I mean, here I am, as a small

business, you know, leader shipping out devices, you know,

$300 a pop to our team. It's just like the PC, it started in

the business. And then it developed consumer applications

later, I see the same thing happening here. With VR.

Jason Baum: Yeah. And to be and and that's just again, like

you're you're not this huge company, but you're a small

company, and you're willing to take the investment because you

see the benefits, which is, which is interesting, because,

yes, it didn't come out and cost millions of dollars to

implement. Yeah. And then there's no cost once you're in

the app at the moment right now, right? In the in the metaverse,

whatever doesn't, it's all free.

Jonathan Schneider: Yeah. I think like a lot of

organizations, we've never tried to overly optimize for cost of

equipment because it's just such a, it's part of, you know, your

daily work. So a marginal improvement in daily equipment,

or the equipment used daily makes a big difference in bottom

line productivity. So that's, I think we see the same thing

here.

Jason Baum: So now we're we're on our way to wrapping up and

you know, Jonathan, this has been this has been an experience

for me, I hope it translated to our to our listeners. I believe

you had recorded a piece of ourselves in the VR world that

we'd love to share with everybody so you can get a sense

of what it looks like. Obviously it's not it's not going to

necessarily do it complete justice. Obviously being there

is you know, sells it but I think it would give you a good

idea of what we were seeing Correct.

Jonathan Schneider: That's right. So you can see the team

members to the right I look over at you. And our producer here

Jaida you can see her on the on the TV screen joining us

remotely.

Jason Baum: Yeah, we'll introduce Jaida, no one, no one.

No one has met Jada. Unless you knew her. Before all this. So

Jaida is our producer. So she'll, she'll make an

appearance for the first time right now humans of DevOps

podcasts, rightfully so by the

Jonathan Schneider: way. Yeah. So yeah, hopefully that's

helpful to visualize it a bit.

Jason Baum: Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much, Jonathan.

This is this has been Truly an experience. Just Just amazing.

It's opened my eyes to a whole new world. A little scared of

where we're going where this is, like I said, I think this is how

the matrix began. Yes, it is. So we'd like to get personal before

we go. And I was like to ask one question. And we I believe we're

going to retire the old question that we used to ask on this

podcast, so I'm going to ask you something different. So if you

could be remembered for one thing? What would that be?

Jonathan Schneider: Wow, that's a that's a deep right.

Jason Baum: We always ask a very deep, deep get to know your

question.

Jonathan Schneider: I mean, I think it's, I remember going to

a So long answer maybe but a seminar a while back on just on

speaking and technical speaking. And the presenter. His name is

Anne Ricketts. By the way, if you're in the Bay Area, she's

absolutely fantastic. You should hire her. But you know, and

Ricketts Lighthouse communication, I think is what

her company is called. They, she said, like, don't try to be like

Steve Jobs. Don't try to be like, you know, some other

famous speaker, what is like your one personality

characteristic that you want to come through? Here. I'm like

this, like from the Midwest, like we're all sort of

upbringing, I think one characteristic of that area is

just, you know, just like friendliness, you know, willing

to, to listen, you know, it'd be be present with your neighbors.

And so I think that's what I always want to bring through.

Hopefully, we made you feel welcome in our local area there

today.

Jason Baum: Yeah, thank you so much. I felt I felt like I'd met

your entire team, like I was at your office. I got to know

everybody it was it's, it's truly a unique experience. And

it's, and you do have a sense of feel like that we've met before,

which is odd to say when I've met a cartoon cartoon version of

you. Well, Jonathan Schneider, co founder and CEO of modern

it's this has been an absolute pleasure. I really appreciate

your coming on and introducing me to the virtual world. Yeah.

Yeah, thank you for listening to this episode of the humans of

DevOps Podcast. I'm going to end this episode the same way I

always do encouraging you to become a member of DevOps

Institute to get access to even more great resources just like

this one. Until next time, stay safe, stay healthy, and most of

all, stay human, live long and prosper.

Narrator: Thanks for listening to this episode of the humans of

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