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.
Grant Fritchey: In terms of that, the learning curve for
people was not for the remote or hybrid, the learning curve for
people was the fact that you're not in the office, the fact that
you don't have immediate communications. And I think that
is the biggest impact. It's not. It's not fully remote or
partially remote. It's remote at all.
Jason Baum: Everyone, Jason Baum, Director of Member
experience at DevOps Institute, and this is the humans of DevOps
podcast. Welcome back. I hope you had a great week. It was a
good one for me, it's been hot and sunny. And I will take that,
especially coming out of what felt like a very long winter. To
say the work world has changed over the past two plus years,
would definitely be an understatement. First, the mask
for shift to fully remote, then the evolution of the attempted
return to the office, then we didn't return to the office than
we were returning to the office. Are we still waiting to return
the office? Who knows? Companies started to adapt. They developed
hybrid strategies. Other companies said forget it, we're
gonna stay remote. Some even made their home base remote and
their offices, satellite offices, we're definitely still
in the, I guess, second wave of change, which is just continuous
change. I found a recent study, one that really piqued my
interest. It was from January 2022. So I'm sure some of these
statistics have changed because this is an ongoing thing. But I
thought some of the stats were interesting. 66% of executives
say their company is considering reorganizing its office space to
accommodate hybrid work. It's definitely different for each
office, some are giving up the you have a space and have
adopted the come in and share the space. Others are keeping
their space but expect you to come in a few days a week 63% of
high growth businesses are using hybrid work models already
hybrid model that works for all generations. Yeah, that one can
be a little difficult. Apparently three out of four Gen
Zers. Want more face to face collaboration opportunities,
compared to 66% of Gen Xers and 66% of baby boomers, which is
interesting to me being in the ladder as a Gen X er. Yeah, I
don't really want to go back. I'll be honest, I've done my
networking ice could still go out and do my networking at
conferences. That sounds fun. But you know, I'm happy in my
home office. A hybrid model in which employees can work
remotely at least 25% of the time is preferred by 83% of the
workers polled. 92% of those polled in one survey expect to
work from home at least once a week and 80% expect to work from
home at least three times a week. So that's pretty
interesting. organizations around the world are turning to
DevOps as a way of working together to improve the
efficiency and quality of software delivery, especially as
they continue navigating to hybrid work environments. But
for some still struggling through their own digital
changes may not be as easy to adapt, which is why providing
guidance to help some of these companies is critical. Here
today to talk to me about the importance of adopting DevOps to
support new hybrid working environments is Grant Fritchie.
Grant has worked for more than 30 years in it as a developer
and a DBA. He's built systems from the major enterprise to
distributed systems to small boutique companies. He's the
author of multiple books, including SQL Server execution
plans, and SQL Server Query performance tuning. He develops
and presents complete structured learning plans to teach Azure,
AWS and other data related topics to developers and other
IRS personnel grants. I'm Microsoft data platform MVP, and
an AWS community builder and grants here today, and I'm very
excited to have you grant welcome to the podcast. Oh,
thanks
Grant Fritchey: for letting me play. Appreciate it.
Jason Baum: Awesome. Are you ready to get human? Yeah, well,
you
Grant Fritchey: know, as much as I get anyway,
Jason Baum: yeah. Sometimes it's tough getting human. So grant,
you're actually at a conference right now. So you're with
people, other humans.
Grant Fritchey: There's Docker, I can see them. You
Jason Baum: can see people can you can you Well, hopefully not
too much touching but I am sure you're doing some handshaking,
which for me is still I have to get over because I didn't like
handshaking before the panel I'm back. Now I'm definitely not
Jacob too many hands. But, but it's interesting that we're
having this conversation as you're around so many people
talking about hybrid. So I guess we could start with, how is
DevOps being incorporated into the workforce? Well, I mean, the
remote hybrid environment, I should say, is DevOps
Grant Fritchey: being incorporated, or enforced to be
one question. But honestly, it is being incorporated into the
hybrid workforce, because what they're recognizing is that,
especially when it comes to deployments, development, that
kind of thing, when you're not in a situation where you're
sitting eyeball to eyeball with someone, where you can't
immediately run down the hallway and go, Oh, my God, everything's
on fire someone fix it, you need a lot more automation, you need
a lot more figuration planning, a stricter, more discipline
process allows you to have, frankly, a looser work
environment. So where you don't have to have that capability of
instant communication, especially, you know, as much as
much as we enjoy our hybrid, and I do, boy, do I ever wear
cavemen, right, we aren't jumped up monkeys, we've got a million
years of evolution that teaches us that that eyeball to eyeball
communication is more efficient. But we're not going to be doing
it as much. So we have to come up with other mechanisms
supporting and DevOps is really acting as one of those
mechanisms.
Jason Baum: And it's interesting. We actually had the
conversation a few weeks ago about, like, the crossover of
hybrid and HR and the roles that they each kind of play or don't
play, or should play in everything. And certainly with
remote versus hybrid, there are differences. So I guess what,
what major differences do you see are complications that are
arising in a hybrid environment that don't necessarily come up
and fully remote. And then vice versa?
Grant Fritchey: Well, I mean, I would, I'm not sure that you're
going to be seeing a lot of stuff that's hybrid that you're
not going to see in a fully remote situation. I'm either
lucky or unlucky, or depending how you look at it. When all
this went down two years ago, I'd already spent nine years
working fully remote, or effectively, fully remote. I
mean, I was always in the office, maybe twice a year,
three times a year. So I would call that fully remote.
Jason Baum: Yeah, I think we can count that as remote.
Grant Fritchey: And so when the initial transition went down, I
didn't notice anything. Other than the fact that I wasn't
traveling to events like this. It was no big deal. But but in
terms of that the learning curve for people was not fully remote
or hybrid learning curve for people was the fact that you're
not in the office, the fact that you don't have immediate
communications. And I think that is the biggest impact. It's not,
it's not fully remote or partially remote. It's remote at
all. And you'll notice that I mean, I used to complain about
my company. Not that I complained about my company, I
love my company. But
Jason Baum: I used to complain that we had our people are
listening,
Grant Fritchey: why I say we had a hallway culture, because there
are a lot of decisions that got made in the hallway, raw, a lot
more decisions got made at the coffee urn that got made in the
meeting rooms. And so they were very good about bringing in the
right people to the meeting, even though I was remote, I
would be brought in, I could make the calls, make the you
know, and make the talks. And we maybe make a decision or two.
And then they'd all walk out with it on their heads and go to
the copier and start drinking and suddenly, wait a minute.
Hey, I've got an idea. And decisions got made that way.
Jason Baum: Yeah, those lightbulb moments. Yeah,
Grant Fritchey: and I'm not complaining about that that
happened. It's normal. But in terms of this hybrid, non hybrid
remote stuff, that's not happening now. And you need
mechanisms in place that are going to allow you to support
people's ability to not be in the hallway. And I wouldn't say
DevOps solves that problem, by any means. But DevOps helps
solve that problem as it moves. Again, it moves a lot of
communication and a lot of mechanisms into known processes
and out of ad hoc mechanisms. So instead of, you know, making the
decision at the coffee here, we're now making those decisions
in a more structured fashion. And, frankly, the automation is
helping the automation is my favorite bit. I love that aspect
of DevOps, but I mean, I mean, I always remember it is people
Process tools, right? That's people or people process
products, that's the better way to put it. But thinking of it
that way, it really makes a difference. I mean, it helps. It
doesn't solve every problem. But but it does help in a major way.
Jason Baum: Yeah, there. I mean, there are some inherent issues,
right? Because these are human issues. So unfortunately,
there's not a tool or process to fix all of them. They just help
them right or make it more efficient. I guess it's the
better word. But you know what, I find it to be fascinating how,
and maybe it's because in a time of crisis, you're you go into
fight or flight, and you just kind of react instantly. And we
all have got, or I don't know what it is this like, second,
this, this thing switches on, right. And we just, we just go.
And when the pandemic happened, that switch, I kind of have
referenced it, it almost makes me think of y2k, except y2k, we
had a lot of time to prepare. And then nothing happened. This
time, we had no time to prepare and something happened. And we
had to shift instantly. And something that was said, Oh,
this digital revolution is changed. This is gonna happen.
And it's gonna take time it took no time it took like, it
happened in weeks. You know, it would by by April, everyone was
remote. You know, it's it's kind of fascinating to look back and
think about, but the transition back to hybrid is much clunkier,
much slower. Why do you think that is?
Grant Fritchey: Well, I mean, one people got comfortable. And
if you're comfortable, you're not going to want to get
uncomfortable. I mean, commuting sucks.
Jason Baum: Putting on pants, forget commuting. Well, I
Grant Fritchey: mean, just so everyone knows that the
conference, I am wearing trousers. But once you're
comfortable, you don't want to change. And so there's
resistance there. Whereas the discomfort before would be, you
know, well, hey, am I gonna go out in this place where I don't
know whether or not the mask is going to work? There is no
vaccination yet. You know, there's there was a certain
level of concern, right, valid concern. So so the switch was
driven out of again, actually comfort, right? I'm more
comfortable working from home. And then of course, you get used
to it, and then you're more comfortable working from home? I
think that's one of it. I think the other is it. It's easier to
work remote when everyone is working remote. It is harder
when there's when the hallway conversations come back in. And
then some people aren't there and you realize, oh, God, we
can't make this decision until we talk to you know, Susie or
Peggy or whoever it is, it's that's going to be involved in
it. And so, you know, it makes it more difficult. It just slows
down the process.
Jason Baum: It's so funny you say that, because I also worked
remote prior to the pandemic. And you know, my home base was
in Chicago, I'm located in the New York area. So you know,
yeah, to go to the office was get on a plane. And same with
you. I was probably in the office, maybe four times a year
five, six at the most. And yeah, it's tough like you go to the
holiday party. So you could show face, you go to the you know,
you try to make sure that you're there. You're there for a week.
Can you show face, but yeah, there's still all those
conversations that are happening that let's go back to that,
because that's an interest, the hallway conversation, the coffee
pot conversation. Just recently, my own company started coming
back, you know, DevOps Institute, we started having in
person meetings, not that frequent. You know, we'll we'll
fly down to our home base in Florida, get together for a few
days. And I got to say, what you can accomplish when you are face
to face, we forget, you get so much more done that could have
taken weeks to do remote, and you get it done in a few hours.
So there is that component that's still there that even
though those of us who are very comfortable working from home,
there is that realization that I think that we are missing that.
Right.
Grant Fritchey: Well, I mean, it lets you say I mean, it's
absolutely an aspect of it. And like I said earlier, we are
monkeys, right? And we did it's unavoidable that evolution is
part of our communication mechanism. And as much as our
technology has grown and just something like this is amazing
and wonderful and really cool. It still doesn't replace the
efficiency of that face to face communication.
Jason Baum: Yeah, even this I'm always like we need the after
conversation. I've been thinking and toying around with the idea
I think I need to take it to like Twitter space or something.
Like continue the conversation get more people involved in the
conversation because I think we have a lot of these we have a
lot of the one offs. We have a lot of the Okay, I'm my team's
going great. But then what about all the other teams are missing
out on other teams silos are made? DevOps is pretty good
about breaking down silos, but it's harder and remote. Right?
So how do these processes? How does this automation? You said,
you're a big fan of automation? How does it combat that?
Grant Fritchey: Well, I mean, the big part of it is that you
can't automate everyone's work, you need everyone involved to do
the automation. So, you know, my work generally, is database,
very, very focused on databases, fine. But I work very closely
with dev teams, I work very closely with the ops teams, and
I work closely with the business. And I can't automate
any of those other things. I just can't I can't control
those. So I have to communicate with those people, you know, and
say, like, Well, hey, I've got my piece automated up to here.
Now, what do we do? Right? Who, who, who picks up the ball and
runs with it from there, and, and we've got it, you know, I
mean, for a good DevOps process, there's got to be somebody doing
each of those steps. I mean, and I know there's some people who
specialize Oh, I can, I can automate the whole thing. I'll
bet you there's, you still bring in some specialists on some
aspects of it, to automate or control other little bits. But
they've all got to go into the same process, they've all got to
go through the same set of testing and the same mechanisms
of protection for your production environments. It all
lends itself to better and more efficient communication. And it
all lends itself to better protection. But it does require
a lot of cooperation, a lot of communication.
Jason Baum: The tools we use as a team have a direct influence
on how we work together, and the success we create. We built
range with that in mind, by balancing asynchronous check ins
and real time collaboration. Range helps remote and hybrid
dev teams build alignment and put time back on the calendar.
Branch connects dozens of apps like JIRA and GitHub in one
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it easier to run focused, efficient meetings with an easy
to use facilitation to create greater team success and
engagement by bringing focus and a bit of fun back to your work.
Visit us range.com/devops To learn more, and try range free.
Yeah, if you ask data scientists, right, and you ask
these these people who live in create AI and machine learning
and all these things, they'll say the first the first thing
I'll say, I feel like most of them will say my job is to make
human lives better not to eliminate their jobs to make
their lives better.
Grant Fritchey: Sure. Well, I mean, and frankly, you know,
I've heard this over and over again, it's like, well, you
know, if you automate all these things, then what am I going to
do for my job? It's like one if your job is poking buttons like
this, your Homer
Unknown: Simpson, right?
Grant Fritchey: Well, maybe we should eliminate catch. But But
no, because your your job, especially if you're in it are
jobs up here, you've got a lot of thinking you have to do and
we need you to be thinking we need you not to be pushing a
button like this. So no, it is about humans, it is about
supporting the humans through their processes. Credit lost
track on the question, no, that's
Jason Baum: okay. So, no, I think that was great. So is
hybrid, do we? So I read those statistics, first of all the
generations, the adaptation from the generations, that's an
interesting one that really stood out to me. And it makes a
lot of sense, right? Those early in their career, really need
that face to face, and are lacking in hell, I work with
people who came into this workforce in this environment
and know nothing different. In some ways, I feel like well,
maybe they're kind of more adept to to work in it. And others I'm
feeling boy, they're really missing out on on quite a bit of
what we all had earlier in our careers.
Grant Fritchey: Oh, yeah. I mean, I mean, I learned so much
early in my career from just being able to turn to the person
next to me who, you know, had a year more than maybe only a year
more and go like, What the hell is this?
Jason Baum: And get that immediate feedback. Right. I
remember sitting in a conference room and just hearing everyone
else talking. I'm like, wow, you sir. Smart people. Being a
little overwhelmed a little bit of impostor syndrome. But it's
good, right? You soak it in, you absorb it, we're missing that.
Grant Fritchey: Well, I mean, I mean, it's talking DevOps, you
know, in a fully remote, or they're even in a hybrid
situation. I may never have jumped on board with this. And
I've been doing automation of database deployments and moving
into a full blown DevOps since 2005. I mean, I've been engaged
in it for 12 years. Is that right? Yeah. Math is hard. Math
is hard. 17 years, 17 years. 17 years. Oh, my God, I'm old, but
I've been doing it for a long time. But I started it, because
I had a developer come up to me and say, hey, you know, I think
we can do this better. I've been reading up on these new things.
And let's sit down and talk about this, you know, and so we
sat down, and we hashed it out, again, face to face. And, and we
figured out some new stuff. I mean, you know, I went off and
did my own thing, he went off and did his own thing. And then
we got together with some with some other people. But, but it
was that initial face to face that made the difference in my
getting started along this path. And you got to think if the poor
people who are only on a hybrid or are only remote, they might
not get that spark, they might not get that moment where you
go, like, Yeah, we really could do something better. And then
start making that change.
Jason Baum: Do you think the full amount because even fully
remote before we were saying, Well, we still got, we were
still in person a few times a year, there were still things
that we did to be in person? Do you see a world where that's
like, kind of be I don't think anyone's fully remote anymore. I
mean, I feel like some people are still doing, I even said my
company, which is a fully remote company, we still get together
and are planning to do that more and are thinking of other ways
to get together because now that it is safer. And look, you're
never 100% safe, you know, no one can promise you those
things.
Grant Fritchey: But I'm flying in an airplane tomorrow.
Jason Baum: Yeah. Look, it's it's it's naive to say you're
safe. Right? But, but we certainly are safer than we were
maybe a year ago or two years ago, for sure. But now that it
is that way, and people are starting to get back to face to
face, you're at a conference. You know, do you think you're
gonna start seeing it returned to where it was before? The very
least with remote companies still doing in person thing?
Grant Fritchey: Yeah, I do. I really think there was no good
while there. You're hearing the phrase regularly? Well, the new
normal. Yeah, well, we're we've already left what was right,
that's already gone. So it was never the new normal.
Jason Baum: I heard a really smart person call it the now
normal in the time. Like, I love that I love Okay,
Grant Fritchey: that was good. I had not heard that I wish I had
because then I would have felt better about it. Because every
time someone said to me, Look, I know I'm old. I'm old. Try trust
me, you're wrong. The The interesting thing here is that
there is efficiency in the face to face. And so I think we are
going to be going back to that. Are we going to be going all the
way back to a fully in a place in a work environment? Now I
think I think there's going to be a degree of hybrid for the
majority of people. I work for a company, I'm not going to name
names. And the CEO once said he won't allow remote work because
he can't allow it for everyone. Guess what, two years ago he
left for everyone really have a choice? You know, that's just
how it went? And I think it's okay. I think it's okay, that
you know, some degree of hybrid is still going to be there. Is
it going to occasionally slow down some conversations? Yes. Is
that occasionally going to impact some of our processes
change some of the some of how we do some DevOps? Sure. But the
fact that we're getting back into that in person making that,
you know, letting the monkey out play, and doing that face to
face communication is more efficient. And I think that
that's just going to continue. I just don't I don't think it's
going to be all the way back. I don't think we're going to see
fully in person. For most companies, I think some may, but
but probably not all, being my son went through the whole
pandemic in manufacturing. And his job didn't change an inch.
They went to work, because that's where the machines are.
And so, you know, there was just no choice.
Jason Baum: I mean, now there's a good percentage of the
workforce that that just worked. I mean, just based on those
numbers. I mean, we said 66%, right, we're, we're remote.
There's still a lot that weren't. Right now those are
transitioning, so there's even less sure. There's also you
know, we're coming close to the end of the podcast, but I did
want to get a few more questions in there. Especially because you
you've sparked my interest on some things. And I'd be curious
to know, we've talked to a lot of people on the podcast
throughout the process of this pandemic. And they've been
adopting some interesting things that I don't think they're gonna
just go away. You know, now that they've been adopted, because
like you said, we're also creatures of habit. We may be
monkeys but we're also we've, we've adapted and we've evolved
in this working from home remote, sort of Hybrid sort of
knots, the constant change. One thing that I've seen is with the
metaverse becoming more popular, and people starting to go
towards it. I talked to at the beginning of this season of the
podcast, a company called Modern, and they started
beverage brand new. They sent me an Oculus, my first time ever
using it, and I got to meet them in the metaverse at their office
in VR. And let me tell you, it felt real, like I mean, like
real, which is weird, because it was clearly not I was talking to
cartoons, when they were next to me, you can sort of feel their
space, your the space between you it felt like you know,
someone was in your, if someone's sitting too close, you
felt like they're sitting too close. All those things, which
is very cool. You can see hand motions nodding your head
sipping your drink, although that's very weird, because can't
see the cup. Again, oh, so all those things you can get up you
could present. So that's how they were working with their
developers, right to move software, you know, have their
their stand ups have their you know, when they are trying to
work out a bug and problem they would they could do it together.
I'm sure you've heard of your own stories from other companies
that are that are taking to interesting methods. You know,
what are some other ways people can foster these type of
environments or those hallway in person conversations that you're
talking about?
Grant Fritchey: Wow, well, okay, I do have one example. Because
the only one I have, I think I have one. One of my dev team
well, and well, several my deficits, one of my devs have
started doing this. And I kind of went, Oh, that's stupid. And
then I did it with them. And it was like, Okay, this is not
stupid. And what they did was slack, I know, Slack. But they
opened up a Slack chat, and it gets what it is. And they open
it up all day long. So it was open all the time. And so you
could just turn it on, you can mute it, if you'd like, if you'd
like neck deep in something that you really didn't want to hear
anything, you could mute it. But it was just there. And so people
could, you know, crack jokes, say something, you know, talk to
each other in real time, responding or not responding as
they wanted to. And it actually improved the communication
between the team. It's one of the reasons, there's been a
couple of teams at the company who've been a little reluctant
to come back into the office, because they're like, now we're
fine. Right? Why do we? So I mean, that that is one in a
little innovation. I mean, just it's a small thing. But but it
is, like you say it's all about that hallway communication
efficiency. And you know, it made it real and direct and more
personal than simply typing into Slack or anything like
Jason Baum: that. Sure. Yeah. I mean, like some of these tools,
and especially in pandemic and become just, like necessary,
like Slack, like zoom like, you know, all these Yeah. And where
did where did some of the other ones disappear off to like Skype
for remember that? You either adapted and became a tool that
people really use or you didn't, we actually just launched a
community for DevOps professionals practitioners, we
actually set up so like, we have an AWS board discussion
community, we have DevOps, human issues, we have SRE, I believe
we have a whole bunch of them, that you could go in and talk
about DevOps culture. So So yeah, I would definitely
encourage those listening that if you're looking for an outlet,
if you're looking to talk to people definitely come in and go
to DevOps in the wild. It's community dot DevOps
institute.com. And maybe I'll take some of these, these
conversations over to DevOps in the wild afterwards. We'll see.
So yeah, Grant, I would love to invite you there. By the way,
maybe we can continue the conversation in there as well.
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I really enjoyed having you on, we
usually ask one last question of our guests. And this one's a
little more personal. So get ready, put your personal hat on.
So if you could be remembered for one thing, what would it be?
I always throw a doozy at the end.
Grant Fritchey: All right, I'm gonna go a little self serving
on it for over two years now. Starting at the beginning of the
pandemic, every workday, I have put up a good morning tweet,
with a little positive message about health, sleep, whatever. I
would love for that actually, to be some thing that people
remember about. Yeah, it's a tiny little thing, but it would
just be cool.
Jason Baum: I love that I think. Well, I have to follow you now.
And I've been starting to tweet as of like last week at A three
song playlist to get you going in the morning. Like music is my
way of just some sometimes in the morning like with that we
just need inspiration. We need something to get us moving.
Yeah, yeah, that's great. I love that. Well, Grant, thank you so
much for being on the podcast was an absolute pleasure. I
appreciate you coming on to while you're while you're away
and you're in a coma for at a conference speaking at a
conference, so it's I really appreciate it.
Grant Fritchey: Well, no, no, thank you very much for having
me. Love to come back sometime when I'm not, you know, in weird
environments. And talk yeah,
Jason Baum: we would love to have you and let's keep in
touch. Definitely. Thank
Grant Fritchey: you very much.
Jason Baum: And 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. Join us in the wild our community, it's community
dot DevOps institute.com. I hope to see you there, where we'll
continue the conversation. Until next time, stay safe, stay
healthy, and most of all, stay human, live long and prosper.
Narrator: Thanks for listening to this episode of the humans of
DevOps podcast. Don't forget to join our global community to get
access to even more great resources like this. Until next
time, remember, you are part of something bigger than yourself.
You belong