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

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

podcast. Well, welcome back. Hope you had a great week. I had

a good one. I was actually Nope. I'm not on vacation yet. Sorry.

Scratch that. Hold on data. Sorry, knows I need a lot of

mental health. Hey, everyone, it's Jason bound Director of

Member experience at DevOps Institute. And this is the

humans of DevOps podcast. Welcome back. Hope you had a

great week. I had a great one. And today I am looking forward

to the greatness continuing, because I am in the presence of

greatness. And and I cannot say enough about the person who is

the guest today. Last week, you were lucky enough? Yes, you are

listener, we're lucky enough. We're always lucky to have you.

But you were lucky to be able to hear the first ever humans of

DevOps podcast hosted by Jane Grohl the founder and co founder

and CEO of DevOps Institute. And so we were kind of playing our

best ofs. And And this week, we're gonna play our current

hit. So with me today on the podcast is co founder and CEO of

DevOps Institute. Jangro.

Jayne Groll: Hey, Jason, Hey, everyone, how are you? I know,

it's like, you know, before, during and after, right? So I'm

really excited with everything you've done with this podcast,

Jason. I mean, we started it as an idea. And then you've just

taken it forward. And I think our audience, so appreciate the

diversity and the range of guests that you've had really

serving, you know, DevOps Institute's mission, which is we

serve the humans of DevOps.

Jason Baum: I actually think we're coming up on, I'm going to

have to fact check it. Or someone else can fact check it.

But I think we're coming up on one year that I've actually been

hosting. I know I came on starting in March, you had me as

a guest, and I think I just loved it so much that I was

like, I want to stay. And and it's just been nonstop since and

I think we've recorded oh my gosh, I think something like 40

some odd episodes since which is absolutely bonkers. I don't know

how that's happened. But here we are today. And yes, kind of come

full circle. So welcome back to the humans of DevOps. And so the

question we always ask is, are you ready to get human?

Jayne Groll: I am so ready to get human, particularly in such

a technical landscape landscape, right. So let's be human.

Jason Baum: I have learned so much from you. In such a short

period of time, I've been very lucky in the course of my

professional life to have known quite a bit of just really

smart, influential people. And I have to say, in the short period

of time that I have known Jane Grohl, I have learned so much.

And it has just been the fact that we actually never met in

person, by the way, until February of 2022 is also just

just absolutely insane to me, because I feel like I've known

you my whole life in some respects. And I've learned so

much from you.

Jayne Groll: Well, we, you know, you and I joke that we share a

brain right, so, so yeah, it was really great pleasure to meet

you. Again, I think that our paths were meant to cross and,

and even just looking at this podcast, I mean, it kind of,

again, the range of people that you've been able to bring on the

conversations, the passion that you feel for DevOps Institute

and for our members is, is just fantastic. And again, I

appreciate everything you're saying to me, but, you know,

this has been a labor of love for for me over the last seven

years, being able to see kind of DevOps in its early days, and

then being able to co found DevOps Institute with my

partners, and then just watching the world. You know, I get to be

the greatest observer of the humans of technology around the

world. And, and it's a real privilege. I mean, it really is

a privilege to be able to do this.

Jason Baum: Well, you know, I think you'll probably remember

the conversation but when I when I started, and then especially

when I started, like getting into the podcast. I was. I was a

little what's the right word? I never afraid to have a

conversation. But I was intimidated. That's The right

word intimidated by this space, because DevOps and you hear

about, I had never heard about it before coming on, we had some

really great conversations that led to my process of coming to

DevOps Institute, but you're really the one who kind of put

it best and make me feel better about it. And, and the core, and

the thing to remember is, it's all about people. And, and

humans, we call them, you know, humans. And it's so funny,

because as I've been here, I've seen the cultural, the cultural

shift that's going on and that everybody is talking about

today. Yeah, here, we're talking about that. This, this was, this

is like old news. I feel like to this industry, and to you, in

particular, when you were telling me about it, you know, a

year and a half, almost, you know, oh, geez, almost, yeah,

over a year and a half ago. And so I want to talk about DevOps,

and I want to talk about just the digital transformation and

the cultural transformation that goes on. But isn't so funny how

I feel like the world is starting to catch up? Do you

feel that way?

Jayne Groll: Actually, I think the world is always one step

ahead of us. And it's really interesting, because I think,

you know, as horrible as this pandemic has been, and you know,

on the human toll, and on the social toll, it's just been

horrific. It pushed us further into the future. As far as

technology goes, as far as social interactions goes, it's

really kind of reshaped, what would have probably happened

anyhow, in terms of, you know, remote work from home and for in

terms of technological advances, remote meetings, remote events,

it probably would have happened anyhow. But we got we got pushed

involuntarily into the future. And now we can't go backwards

right now, we can't, you know, we can't go backwards. And, you

know, to your point about humans, we use the term humans,

because regardless of anything else, male female gender

identity, where you're located regionally, at least today,

we're all human. And so it's a common characteristic among all

of us, that that we share, most of us wake up in the morning and

just want to do right by our job, our family, our lifestyles.

And that's a very, very human right characteristics. So in a

very technical landscape, it's so easy to forget about humans.

And from the early days, our mission at DevOps Institute, has

always been to advance, right to advocate to represent the human

elements of a very, very technical society. So yeah,

we're catching up. But I still think it's like the carrot in

front of us, right, just about the point where, you know, if

you're a 200 year old enterprise, and you're trying to

figure out how to stay competitive, or you're a human

that's, you know, been growing your career. It's a carrot

that's always just, you know, quarter inch away from you, and

you're afraid you're just never going to catch it. And the truth

is, you probably never will.

Jason Baum: There's a there's a phrase that people come on. A

few people have used this. And, and I know there's a book, but

computers are easy, the people that people are hard. And isn't

it true. But at the end of the day, we all just want to be

treated like people, you know, like humans, I this quote, and I

don't know why, but it has been really just sticking in my mind

when I think about treating others, like humans treating

each other like humans and how, in in the workplace. This seems

to be. Unfortunately, it was not the rule. Right. It was always

kind of the exception, and now it's becoming. That's not the

rule yet. But But I think there's a big shift for it

happening. But there's the quote, from The Merchant of

Venice, that I just love this quote, and, and the character

obviously, there's all Oh, we don't have to get into the

Merchant of Venice, but that Shylock, quote, you know, of,

you know, if you prick us, do we not bleed if you tickle us? Do

we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? It's like, what

says it better than that? It just says that all.

Jayne Groll: Yeah, absolutely. And again, you know, in the

early days of technology, I mean, people forget, we're

really young industry. So we're almost just teenagers right now,

and maybe even a little belligerent. We can talk about

the great resignation and the fact that, you know, these

generations that are younger than I am, are really taking

hold. You know, they're emboldened by, by the, you know,

the worst conditions of the pandemic and they don't want to

go backwards. Right. But as humans, you know, the Only days,

we had social interactions with each other, you know, we were 25

people on the same floor in the same building, I worked in lower

Manhattan, right, that's how I started my Accidental Technology

career. And then, you know, as it grew, and companies grew, and

they globalized and, and all of that, that, you know, the

ability to know each other, their families go have a beer

together a cup of coffee, or have lunch together, that

changed, right, it changed. And then as the different

specialties within it happened, we grew further and further and

further apart, so that we didn't know each other anymore. And the

social side of it really disappeared. And the one thing

that we know about people, whether you're an introvert or

an extrovert, you need to know that, that your organization,

your managers, your colleagues care about you write it, you

know, we're talking quotes, one of my favorite quotes is from

Zig Ziglar, who was just if you've never, you know, listened

to Zig Ziglar, that great Mississippi accent, he was a

sales, a sales mentor, but he said nobody will care how much

you know, unless they know that you care about them. And, and I

think that, you know, for a long time enterprises, I don't think

I don't think maliciously, but we were a commodity, right, we,

you know, they're the humans are a commodity. And in technology,

we've never been a commodity, but we we look at the technology

first and the human after, right. And so, you know, you

mentioned digital transformation, digital

transformation is not going to happen without human

transformation. It's just, it can't humans still have to

author they still have to administer these, you know, they

still have to select different technology. So, you know, we can

talk all we want about digital transformation, and it's a nice

hype term, but it's going to be humans that power that. And, and

humans, again, are going to need to collaborate, they're going to

need to be good systems thinker, they need to be diverse, they

need to have good empathy. You know, these are all I mean, our

upskilling report era for years shows that your human skills are

as important as your technical skills. So again, and we get we

get a front row seat to that, right, because luckily, you and

I and the rest of our team, you know, we interact with so many

different regions of the world. So many different people have

different backgrounds, different experiences, different cultures,

that we see this is just a common need. Right? We need to

we need to be respectful.

Jason Baum: Yeah. Gotham palapa has the book leading with

empathy. I mean, I love that is there anything better than that?

I mean, it's so true. When you're when you're, when you can

lead with empathy. It just makes it you're all going the same

direction, when you can understand what the other person

is going through what they can understand what you're going

through, you can see Siva, through the world do this not

the same lens, because we're all gonna have different lenses, but

understanding that those lenses are different, and that's okay.

And we can all get through it together, we're going along the

same direction rather than working against each other. So,

I guess I would, I'm just curious, what is it about DevOps

for you? Why did you Why is this the particular direction for

your career? Why, why did you choose DevOps?

Jayne Groll: I don't know that I chose it or it chose me so

there's there's that but that's been kind of the pattern share

Jason Baum: the brain, I knew that was gonna be yours. I

Jayne Groll: told you, I'm an accidental technologist, I, you

know, I have a degree in music, I got out of college, there was

just no jobs under AM. And my mother taught me to type. So I

was a paralegal legal secretary for the first part of my career,

until I bumped into an organization that was pretty

progressive in technology. But you know, to answer your

question about DevOps, so I come from the ITIL space, right, so

after I was a director of it for a long time, and manage large IT

organizations kind of fell into ITIL, which was you know more

about how to run it more like a business and had a very, very

good career in that, and then literally just bumped into

DevOps, like we got invited to a DevOps days in 2012. by Jean

Kim, many of you know him as the author of the Phoenix Project,

who was a friend from the ITIL space. And we saw Spark, like

there were 300 people in this old dusty warehouse. I've told

this story a bunch of times, they were like 300 people, five

of which were women. The evening music was bring your own

instrument and we'll just jam and and it was very organic. And

there was a lot of discussion about culture. Right and and it

was it was a wake up call that in it while we were progressing.

Technically, we were losing our sense To our cultural aspects, I

like the word culture, but I also hate the word culture

because it sounds so surgical, right? Like, oh, let's take out

the old culture and put it in a new culture. But there was

something there. That was very exciting. And this is in the

very early days where the Wall Street Journal was writing

articles about whether DevOps could cross the chasm into the

enterprise. So I mean, that question has been asked and

answered, but but the point is, there was something there was a

spark there that you could see that, you know, I mean, think

about what DevOps means developers and operations, okay,

security, you know, felt a little left out. But it meant

that these teams had to work better together. That's that's

the heartbeat. It wasn't about continuous integration or

continuous delivery. It was, how do we create an environment

where there's more collaboration, there's more

cooperation, there's shared tools, accountabilities, things

like that. So from the very early days, it was meant to be a

human movement. Right. And of course, you know, the other part

of it is let's embrace automation so that it'll do all

the boring, redundant work. But it was never meant to be

specifically a technical, you know, framework or anything like

that. It was all about how do we work together better? How do we

increase flow by doing that, and that, to me, was very, very

exciting. And I thought that enterprises might embrace it.

But it took a couple of years before we even founded DevOps

Institute. So that was 2012, we founded DevOps Institute in late

2014. So we kind of watched, you know, what was happening at

Netflix and Google and, you know, all these companies that

were kind of excited about it.

Jason Baum: So with the transformation, whether it be

digital, cultural, what have you. It takes a certain skill,

right, takes certain skills to be able to do these things, and

are relatively new, or newer. Field, really? Where do these

skills come from? And where did the talent, where's that talent

come from? What are the skills that make the talent for it?

Jayne Groll: Well, that's interesting, because part of it

is individual and part of it is corporate, right? I can't force

you to learn something, right? I could give you every resource,

every opportunity. But even though we joke that we share a

brain, your brain has to be the one willing and excited and

taking the time and effort and having the accessibility to be

able to learn but but you have to want to learn, right, and

it's difficult. I mean, my generation, you know, that's the

way we've always done it, that's the way we should do it. And

today, it's happening so quickly, there is a huge skills

gap today, between the organizations that want to move

forward, and the available skills, and individuals, some

people call them talent. Again, it's another one of those

surgical terms, but the talent that's available, you know, we

do our annual upskilling report, the next one is going to release

on May 12. And we see a couple of interesting things in terms

of skills. There's certain technical or functional skills

that everybody I don't care what your role is, should be

exploring getting education on again, we have 11

certifications, really being able to take training or to to

self teach, and that security cloud operations, right all of

that is essential to today's IT professionals and there's

there's access to that type of resource, whether it's through

us or whether it's self learn peer to peer, those skills are

the skills of the future, the tangible, functional technical

skills. But for four years in a row, it's the human skills. You

know, you just mentioned like, you know, Gotham's leading with

empathy. Yes, I don't think there's anybody that will say I

don't think I need empathy. Right? Or I don't think that I

should be a better collaborator. No, no, no. The problem is,

there isn't a lot of of, I don't know, if you want to call it

skilling on how, you know, there's kind of an assumption

that either you're good at it or you're not, or you know, you're

a good communicator or you're not or you're an extrovert or an

introvert and therefore, you're assigned certain

characteristics, when there are tangible, right, there are

tangible ways to intentionally try and the word try is so

important in terms of human skills to try to improve your

empathy or to try to be a better communicator. There are

techniques that are out there that are, you know, that are

known and proven and are not necessarily surgical. They're

very human.

Jason Baum: I couldn't agree with that more, I like smile as

you're talking because it's like, so I just, we don't

emphasize it enough. In the collective we like culturally,

there's that word. The, what we're called soft skills we call

human skills are like, yeah, they're important. And then no

one pays attention to them until it's too late. Or we don't put

our mouth where our money where our mouth is.

Jayne Groll: Because there's an assumption that you're going to

either do that on your own, or that it's very Fluffy, fluffy,

right. That's the problem. And yeah, and I mean, when you look

at training, budgets, right training budgets on, you know,

how to be a, you know, how to look at diversity and inclusion,

some of that training is happening now. Same thing with,

you know, sexual harassment training or, you know,

unconscious bias training. I mean, companies are investing in

that. But I can tell you, you know, Jason, I really think that

you should improve your collaboration skills. And you'll

say, oh, Jane, thank you for that feedback. And then you walk

away, go, Okay, I don't know how to do that. Right. What should I

do? Where do I start? Right. And so it's, it's hard, right? Soft

skills are hard.

Jason Baum: Think about diversity inclusion for a

second. The obviously, that's not well, diversity and

inclusion as a as a pillar as like something that now we have

diversity inclusion officers, there is a, there is an actual

emphasis being placed on it. And it is a mission now, right? For

many that we are, we are diverse and inclusive, and it's

something that now appears on every job posting in it, there

is an emphasis, but what took what happened to get to that

point? I mean, think about how many years we had to go before

diversity and inclusion was made a priority. So now you say like,

yeah, that, that it's that is Fufu, or fluffy or whatever,

that some of these other aspects, human aspects are

incredibly important, by the way, and no, no one is more

important. Well, being diverse, being diverse and inclusive is

pretty important, but sort of these others, and, I mean,

there, it literally takes people got it, getting into the

streets, and, and marching and protesting and, you know,

getting in people's faces, to get one of these things checked

off as a mission. What do we have to do for the others?

Jayne Groll: Well, and that's a challenge, because I also wonder

whether, because we remember I can I can give you all the

access in the world, I can create a diverse team where we

have women, people of color, we have diversity, right? We we

require inclusiveness, but unless you, Jason, right, have

now opened your mind, right to be able to change some of your

thought patterns, some of your behaviors, whatever, then it's

not going to get us where we need to be. And there's training

and techniques to do that. I'll give you an example. Conflict

Management, right? So people deal with conflict they have a

go to. And I'm so sorry, because I know that you've been

struggling with a with a cold this week.

Jason Baum: Yeah, I have bronchitis for everyone

listening. So that's why I'm, if you're listening, you're

hopefully you can't tell I'm muting myself.

Jayne Groll: If you're not contagious, not contagious.

Jason Baum: not contagious. Just

Jayne Groll: know, but But you know, look at conflict

management. So we all have a go to on conflict management,

right? You may be an avoider, you may be a win win, you always

have to win on these kinds of things. Or you may be a lose,

lose, right? Or you may be passive aggressive. But there

are techniques, there's something called the Thomas

Killman inventory that will assess like what your conflict

management style is. But it will also tell you when to use the

other styles, and how to learn to be able to know when to

compromise, how to know how to work with somebody else whose

style may be different than yours. I know you've done disc

and Myers Briggs with your team and with others, it helps you to

understand not only you but it helps you understand your

teammates so that you know some people like that, hey, how's the

family how whatever, and some people just want to get right to

it. And how do you know the difference in who you're

communicating with? So, you know, it is a little bit of a

personal journey. It requires an openness and it also requires

corporate support. To be I've worked for organizations where

you know, we did do Myers Briggs on everybody. And that's not the

perfect solution. All right, sometimes it's having a brown

bag lunch and getting to know people, right? I mean, sometimes

it's as simple as, as, again, do a zoom brown bag lunch, and

don't talk about work. Just talk about yourselves, what books are

you reading? What music do you like, you know, create that

relation humans are relationship people

Jason Baum: comes back to empathy. I think that's I mean,

for myself for my team, why we did it? Why I why I had

everybody do it was, I want to learn about everybody, I want to

know you, I want to know, you know, if you don't want to small

talk, let me know, like, I want to know that I want to know,

that means we're going straight to the Congress. And I want you

to know what it is for me to. So that you know how I want to have

a conversation. And then we have I'm going to, they don't, they

don't know it yet. But there, we've sort of filled this out.

We're just starting it. But there's a handbook that we're

going to have for working together for the team. And it's

got some of those things like you just mentioned our Myers

Briggs Personality in it. It's got our work anniversary, Scott,

what pronouns do we want to use? The areas of focus that we love,

things that fit in? How does different things that we do fit

into our life outside of work? You know, what music to, like,

just all the so aspects of professional life, and personal

because it is all all in one. Have you seen the show, there's

this show, I believe it's on Apple. And it's called oh my

gosh, I can't remember the name of it. But anyway, it's a, it's

gonna come to me because it's it's part of the process, but

they literally separate the part of your mind that your work,

memories stay at work, and your home memories stay at home, and

they never meet. And so there's a work you that exists, and is

just always at work, and has nothing else outside of work.

And then there's the homie. And it's, it's really fascinating.

Because my gosh, that doesn't exist. We are all in one one

person.

Jayne Groll: Yeah, but you know what? This is a great example.

So you took the initiative as a leader to do this with your

team. It isn't a company wide initiative. Right? You did this

on your own? But that's But Well, not yet. Right. But but

but this is a message to our audience that I think that's

really, really significant. A leader that's inspired to want

to improve the work environment, that one do, you spend more time

at work than you spend in any other part of your life, but a

leader that's inspired to want to improve the work environment

to improve the relationship between teammates to get to know

each other? Right? Jason, you're doing that. And again, you

didn't come to me for funding, you didn't come and say, oh, I

need you know, whatever, whatever, you just did it,

right? You just did it. So if you're listening, you know, the

old Nike just do it, there are so many resources, to be able

to, whether you're the official leader of your team, or you're a

member of your team, there's so many resources that are

available that you could just do to be a but you have to want it

right you have to want to create an environment or be that

evangelist or that change agent, whatever term you want to use.

Because again, you can just do it right, and your teammates,

you know, once somebody takes the lead, whether it's the

official leader or not, once somebody takes the lead and the

ball gets rolling, most people like that, I mean, you're not

going to cross the line into, you know, too personal and

people will let you know that. But on the other hand, were

relationships and your work relationship is almost as

important not quite as your home relationship. Right. And so, you

know, people make friends at work. Well, I have friends

around the world that I have never met in person. Right? Lots

of them. But But again, you know, we kind of, we kind of go

through this thing. So again, if you're listening and hear what

Jason's telling you, you can just do it right? You can build

your own team handbook and maybe another peer leader, what

decides they want to do that too. And then it becomes viral

and it doesn't require some type of Act, right? Some type of

mandate from upper management to be able to make that happen,

because by the way, in culture, upper upper management mandates

almost never work. They never work, right? Because you can't

force it. It has to be from within.

Jason Baum: It's got to be organic. Yeah, it does. And real

authentic people can see right through it, right.

Jayne Groll: Yeah, I mean, you know, organic. I love that word

too, right. Think about the term organic right? I mean, you know,

it has to be, it has to be a combination. And if you're

sitting there waiting for your upper management to, you know,

deem something to happen, that's not the right approach, right?

It's not a right approach. Talk to one of your peers, talk to

one of your colleagues. Have a cup of coffee, even if it's on

Zoom.

Jason Baum: Love it. Love it. We could talk forever, Jane.

Jayne Groll: I know. I know. It's,

Jason Baum: it's a, it's so nice to just be able to talk to you

like this. And we talk all the time. But I love the coffee. I

like when we get into it like this. This is This is wonderful.

I feel like we could do a whole other podcast. So so the thing

that we like to do at the end of the show, is ask one somewhat

personal question, because it's human, right? The humans of

DevOps. So I'm going to ask you this one, because I'm just

curious. So if you could, if you could be remembered for one

thing, what would that be?

Jayne Groll: Oh, that's a really hard question. I mean, I've been

so blessed. In my life, I've had a really great career. I've met

some amazing people. But I'd like to think that I've been

human, all the way through that, that I'm true to true to my

values again, you know, nobody's perfect, right? I'm a little bit

of the crazy cat lady. So you probably saw some of my cats

walking by in the background. But if I could be remembered for

anything, I'd like to be remembered for the fact that I

kept humanity right at the forefront of, of whether it's my

family, whether it's whether it's my work environment that I

stayed human.

Jason Baum: I love it. Love it. And thank you so much for sorry.

I really appreciate your coming back on the show. And and

letting us play last week's episode, the first ever episode.

So if you didn't get a chance to listen to that, go back and have

a chance to listen to it now. And then coming back on and

coming full circle. This has been absolutely a pleasure.

Jayne Groll: And I'm so proud of what you've done with this

podcast and with our member experience. Jason, I mean that

for my art. I'm so glad that you agreed to takeover as, as host.

And and for those of you listening, you know, this humans

a DevOps podcast is really under, under Jason's really

tutelage of sorts. I'm, I'm very proud of what you've been able

to accomplish.

Jason Baum: Thank you. Thank you. It means a lot. And, and I

have to say, the credit really goes to, to Jaida, who is our

producer, and I'm going to call her out and give her some

credit. She likes to stay behind. Behind the mic, I guess.

Behind the camera. And and yeah, we've we we can't do it without

you, Jane. So thank you.

Jayne Groll: Yeah, really? The HUD pod squad? Isn't that what

we call it?

Jason Baum: That's what we call it internal. Yeah, that's our

internal. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for listening to this

episode of the humans of DevOps podcast. We had fun. Hope you

did, too. I'm going to end this episode. Oh, before we go,

though, I'm so excited because I'm going on vacation. So I'm

saying this, I'm going on vacation. I'm off to, I'm gonna

say where I'm going to St. Lucia. And so I will be back.

You know, at some point, maybe we'll say no, yeah, I'll

definitely be back in a week. But so next week is going to be

a rerun, and then I'll be back in the in the microphone on the

mic. I don't know how this works. I'll be back in a week.

So I'm going to end this episode the same way I always do

encourage you to become a member of DevOps Institute Institute to

get access to even more great resources just like this one. I

made it I made it and I didn't lose my voice. I'm so proud of

myself for that. Until next time, stay safe, stay healthy,

and most of all, stay human. Live long and prosper.

Jayne Groll: Bye, everyone.