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.