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.
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