What's going on? Everyone?
I'm Will Button and this is Adventures in DevOps. Today I've got the co host with the most with me, Jonathan Hall.
Hey, everybody, how's it going?
And today we have our very special guests Danielle Fontani. How are you man, I'm fine, I'm fine.
Thank you for having.
Met an adventure and DevOps, this effort and getting this this recorded. It has truly been an adventure.
Sure, Sure, we are talking about adventure and.
Is the.
So we've actually got an article from you about I gonna gonna pull up the title because the title just cracks me up. Tri Sarah tops why DevOps is not only an acronym and this is a great article to read. We'll put a link to it in the show notes. But it's that the unique combination of being humorous and informative. And so we're going to dig into that and talk
about acronyms and develops. But first, for any of our listeners who may not be familiar with this, you want to give us a little bit about your background.
Sure, I work as a CEO in seeing traditional business at a digital company and we try to help companies for accelerating their digital transformation of cours and in this company, I love to devise about the VopS of COURTSA. In the spare time, I love to play with open source project and contribute to the community. And I love also to write article for sharing my opinion and be in touch with the community itself. So that's why also I'm here and I love to be here with you.
So tell us how did you get to How did you even get to the point where you were writing an article called tri sterotops? Why the VopS is not only an acronym?
Oh sure, sure, the story is quite it's quite funny. It's quite funny because it comes from a previous article. My previous article that was that has a little bit provocative, provocative title the VopS is.
Dead Long life to pops.
Where where in that article I write about why we should focus more on the app development and try to find some way to automate the application development instead of wasting a lot of time on the infrastructure. And then already one user reply to the comment and tell me what would be the next the next one acronymus in the bobs would be patched out of So this make me loved so much, And I told myself I will have to write an article about that.
So that's how, and I think.
I'm gonna have to use this, I have to say. I mean, I have these conversations all the time where someone's like, what do you think about DevOps, sep secups, blah blah blah blah, and I'm going to just start throwing pops in there.
Sure, But now that we have learned that, the algorithm is quite simple because you can take the OPS word and put something on in front in front of that, so you can be everything ups of course, but at the end it's always the bobs because there are many way many improvement of the same things. When we talk about guitops, we don't it's not something different than hobs on the scopes, and so I think that at the end, what you are doing is the VopS of course, but
there are many ways to do that. There are many driver One one important driver is about automation and reduce the human effort on on the operation side, and how you can do that. You can do that by implementing hobs. You can do but at the end, what is no hobs not, of course, it is use using the cloud and implementing automation or using tool that do that do that for you. So at the end, probably there is
only one the VOBS topic. I don't know what you think about that, but I don't see too many difference between two approach. What I see is a way for putting something inside our actual the VopS process, like the think about the set cops. You know this is another badsword. Everybody will do that, But what is the se cops in the end is really different than the VopS or it's really different implement a process.
Rather than the regular the best process.
I don't think so, because you just have to add another add other people into the process, add or other competencies into the process.
If you are able to have auto meet automated.
Tests on application, maybe you can also automate security tests.
So form a.
Point of view, all that are buds work And we have to hear that bads word because I think it's important to to have to listen to the new new trends and follow the new trends and take what is good in that. But then we have to put into into our reality. We have to put in practice what theories tells and and the thing that this is the probably this is the the most important thing to remember when we see some acronymous or badsword in in some Twitter.
Or LinkedIn post.
And if you if you read some title like the VopS is dead long life to hypops, of course, don't trust this this article is. Don't trust that outdoor because probably they are trying to to tell you something not not too terrible. Probably it's just something that you can add to your to your experience, but it's not something revolutionary. What else I believe? I really believe in the no
hops trend. Just we talking that you don't believe the acronymus, but I really love the driver of putting less effort as possible on the operation part.
And this of course for.
Me, it doesn't mean forget about that part or take some risks. Of course, you have to use an infrastructure that works, that is performat. But what you should do is to use as much as possible tools and platforms that make possible that you have to focus only on the software part. Because more time you spend on the software part, more value you put in your product, and more value has your product and more customers will will buy it. So we have to focus on what brings value to us.
This can be done. This, This is possible.
This is possible because we have a lot of tool in the market for automating releases an example, for automating testing example. We have a lot of tools that automatically bid your application and deploy to an infrastructure that is fully managed. Maybe, of course, and we can use hyperscaler services.
But I think this is a very very good driver, a very very good driver because every minute you spend our mounting our drive on a server or connecting with cable through devices, it's time that you've asked because the cloud do it do that for you? And cloud services are areable, are performance and are good. And when I talk about this transformation, a lot of seas are mean, are scared because they think.
What will happen to me? Yeah?
Sure, a lot of people are carried by as carried by the kind of article I write, because they ask what will be my future? The future will be different. I think that everybody has to change. If we think about informatic chance and programming ten years ago is very different and in the next tenty years will be more different. So we are evolving. The vobs is spreading and forces.
I mean, guys, they have to start at asformation. Transformation could be become DevOps, but there are a lot of other things that we have to do.
Even if you have even if.
You are approaching and no OP scenario, we will still have to monitor the application. We will still have to take care about security, we will still have to take care about invoices, and we are it's easy to start a cloud service. We just have to put credit card number into the system and you are set.
But what is there.
The problem is that every month, every month, you will have an invoice and you have to pay attention about what you are paying, what you are taking for. And this is a this is a new job, a new job. Of course, big companies spend thousands, not thousands, but hundreds
of thousands of dollars monthly in clouds. So if you say, if you are to if you are able to save the teen percent of unused the resources, or you do improvement, this is a good value and maybe you will stop to plug cable and you will start to take care about financial and financial aspect. Another Bads'm sorry for that. Also, pops is another trend that that that is that will
be important more and more. We will use the cloud more and more we will get invoices from the cloud, from the cloud, and more and more we want to be sure to spend for what we use. So there are a lot of new professions that that are that are growing near the develops, near the clouds. So I won't be scared. I don't want to be scared about the end of the OM premise because we have always feared to to talk about that. But but the compromises
is low in dying. I don't know for how many years we will still have compromise data center, for how many heres we will still have to plug cable on?
How are that center?
So for most of us, the time of the retirement is very long, so we have to we have to think about what we have to do until that. So if Areas is I mean, guys, I won't be scared about the vopes, I won't be scared about no hopes. I will take this as an opportunity of being able to change my my work, change my professional and do something that brings more value for the for the company
and for myself. But probably I see that I'm probably I don't want to be too rude, but I but I think this is the reality.
Probably yeah, no, I agree with you a hundred percent. Like there's no oh scenario in technology where you can get a job and do that same job for the next thirty or forty years until you retire. Like there's just that just doesn't exist. And if that's important to you in your career, technology is probably the wrong career path for you.
Become a waiter, right, people always want to eat?
Yeah?
Sure, And by the way, I was a waiter and I loved it. It's fun work. I'm not missing the job.
I've actually never done that.
You are missing out. We just need waiter ops now, foodofs. And I agree, I mean the truth this. I mean I actually had somebody asking the other day, aren't you concerned about shift left because doesn't that just mean automating more things? And my response was not, really, I'm not. I mean, yes, that's maybe what it means, or part of what it means, but somebody has to write and
maintain that automation. And you know, until we invent general AI, which may or may never happen, there's always going to be people who are maintaining automation. And that's what I mean, that's kind of what develops has become right, so that this practice is not going anywhere anytime soon. It will change in every way, but it's it's not we're not getting We're not going to be replacing people with with automations.
Sure, but if you think not only technology, not relate into the technology, but if you think what happened on the industrial revolution, it's the same. Nobody nowadays can think about going producing a car without using machines, and the same is in the in the in programming and in.
The vobs and so on.
If we can avoid the human effort of courts, there is no vision.
There is no vision.
To still spend many days instead of money.
There is no reasion.
I think one of the other things that you touched on it's really resonates with me, is the whole business of monitoring cloud expenses, and I think a lot of people underestimate how big of a value that is. You know, one just to be able to help identify where those expenses are and control those costs. But for a lot of us it may be the first time in your career when you can actually quantify the value that you
bring to a company. You know, a lot of times if you're a sisadmin, or an IT administrator or a network engineer that's like a fixed cost. You know, you can go to any number of websites and see what your salary is going to be within a certain range.
But when you get into like managing cloud based expenses, your value, you're like, the value you provide to be able to cut someone's cloud bill by ten percent is going to be different from someone who's spending in ten thousand dollars a month on the cloud versus some one who's spending two hundred thousand dollars a month on the cloud, And so ten percent gives you a way to quantify
the work that you're doing. And whenever you can do that, it gives you the ability to negotiate what you want as a salary, which is something that you unique to people from SIS admin, it even programming backgrounds.
Sure of course, uh it is one of the new professions that that will be very important. And of course, as you're told, the more high is the expense of the company, and more you are useful in that in that role and for us as adminting guys, the question is where I can bring more value plugging a cable or spending five minium to control the cost. Probably the answer is the second one, and probably you will need not only technical competencies but also financial and other kinds
of competency. So this requires this teach us. Another thing that another turn that's happening is that involves developers and the bobs guys, and that teach us to learn not only are skill and not early technical and technical competencies, but also work on the soft skill because also being able to read the balance or number is important for
his administrating a cloud, a cloud services. And moreover, think about the scenario when you have more than one cloud provider because a lot of companies now are implementing multi cloud strategy because they fear they're low key and they don't want to stay on only one IPS scaler because it could it could fail and what is there is
some issues, so they stay multi cloud. That multi cloud is harder to maintain because you have service is spread along multiple vendors with different pressing models, with different invoices, and this is very hard to manage and it is very easy to forget about united resources left active some servers an example that you are not using this need attention and more need attention. The fact that in this complex scenario. In this complex scenario, there are also security
security problems that we have to monitor. So cloud is a very good opportunity for people.
That are more related with harder.
To grow and to start a new career probably and bring more value to companies and bring more valid to itself because for what I see on job advices, the boss professional very very well paid in the world, and more and more paid. So this is another thing that we have to take in account at the end.
Yeah, very good.
I think it's really interesting. I hadn't really thought about this until now, But I deal a lot with people who are starting their develops careers, and a lot of
the focuses on the technical skills. But from your perspective, like there's a huge or it feels like a huge unserved market of these other skills, you know, the financial skills and the communication skills, and like the business skills to be able to translate business requirements into develops or infrastructure requirements and then quantify that.
You're right, I probably I have not a clear handswer is hard to quantify this amount of competencies. But even in the in the programming world, the developer need to be more and more and more able to communicate with teammates. And also, I don't know if you remember maybe ten years ago when we have UH software developer and then architects.
With the cloud, each developer have to be more architect and less developer because you if you know which piece take from the cloud and put together, you will save a lot of time. So competencies are really changing and having good soft skill helps a lot on the Bobs career. Probably the most important, the most important soft skill I can image the communication one, because you often are in the middle between software and infrastructure and you have to
understand what is happening. Often it's hard to find the true between between software and infrastructure and software doesn't work.
So we have to be good.
Communicat and don't be scared about the issue because because when issues up and in production, you still have to find solution very quickly. And also problem solving is a very good competency that you have that you need. The things that scare me about soft skill that it's very hard to develop the soft skill, so that are not courses that you can buy on Eudemy or on some other training platform for being able to communicate on something like that. So this is a good question.
This is a good question. Probably I don't have a good answer for that.
Yeah, that's a great point. I agree one hundred percent. Maybe that can be our next pops acronym. As we create a we create a generator framework for communications. It just automatically generates the right buzzword for you to say at the right time.
And did you ever speak pig latin?
Will?
I think we might be onto something here. We could do something like that just at the end of every work.
In your sentence, this is what happens when Chuck leaves us alone to do the podcast.
This is how I convince him never to leave us alone again.
I love that. I love that well.
I liked your article. I like the point it's I mean, it's basically a joke, now, isn't it that you can just add ops to everything. I mean, we were making the literal joke about it, but back in the industry it's a joke. You can just call anything ops baseball ops, and football ops, and and people ops and whatever. It's it's almost lost its meaning. But you really make a good point. You know that the principles are essentially the same. The idea of making things simpler through through the use
of automation and tearing down silos. And that's that's valuable. Whatever you want to call it, whether we call it dev sec ops or DevOps or whatever, it's a it's a great goal and has proven very valuable.
Sure agreed.
So when you talked about this article, was was inspired by a convent on your previous article which is about apples? Was that was that intended as a as a sort of tongue in cheek or sarcasm or a joke or was that what was your what was your point about apples?
Sure? Sure?
Is why I told never trust who who is writing the article like the bobbies that long life to because this is a little click bait title, of course, of course, but we we have also to find a way enough for being read, so we had to put such kind of titles to be read. But the content of the article talks about still talks about the the principle of finding a way for putting your attention on apps instead
of infrastructure. And this this is important to remember, especially when you adopt some tool like Kubernetes, an example that is a very very good tool and can be used a cloud and simplify your life, but need a strong governance. And in this article, I find a way for finding tools, for finding tools that could be able to simplify to simplify the Kubernet's governance and let you focus just on
the source code development and doing that. What happened happened that you write the code and you describe how the application should be deployed, and everything is done by itself, So don't worry about pods, services scaling, repass scaling and so. So this is a good way for starting approaching kuberneties and the deployment itself in.
A different way.
So just take us with code and describe how the application should be deployed. Don't worry about what will happen because you can support. There will be a tool that will take this information and we'll translay this information into an infrastructure for your application.
You brought up a really good point earlier, and I want to highlight it because I think there's a lot of hidden value in it. You mentioned, specifically in regards to app ops, that that puts the value on the things that your customers are paying you for. Right because and I've heard this stated multiple ways in the past, but basically, like, no customer is ever buying your product
because of because of how you build your docer files. Right, They're paying you for the service that you're providing, and I think that's really important. You know, it's not to say that like creating good, efficient, secure docer files is not important, because it is, but it's important to keep it in perspective in like what's its role in the business of generating money for this company?
Sure, and this this is hard to say because we as technician, we love to let the customer how we are doing things, and we put a lot of effort for keep possible that the product works for writing code, I mean creating good infrastucted. But the customer basically don't mind about that. So this is not important that the software is safe because he knows the software is safe. It's a requirement, so we cannot. It's not surprised if you tell that you are doing the best you are
using the best tool have it. It's supposed to you to use. So it's important to keep up to be attention to where the money comes from. And when I tell product, I'm not referring only to startups or says product, but every company. Every company has a core business and in this core business there is inside some part of the ETO. Nowadays, we cannot start run a company without some its some software development and this is part of the product.
But you have to pay attention.
You have to be able to move your attention, your mess days and your mind to the software development, to the application development, to the future. And if you can find a way for using tool or solution that work by itself and you can buy so you cannot forget about infrastructure, you cannot forget about the VopS and so on. But you have to find the way for buy things that works without human effort.
This is my opinion.
Yeah, I agree, Well said you're here, all right, what else should we talk about? Sounds like we have consensus.
Then it was a great event to solve the world.
We just need the right acronym to sell it.
Sure, Sure, when you will discover a new acronym, just let me know. I will write a new article on that deal.
It must be the first one of writing.
Gotta get that first round, se o clickbait.
Sure, sure is his chancellor.
All right, so we're ready to wrap this episode up.
Yeah, I guess we read some pics, don't we we do?
Yeah, so, Danielle. At the end of each episode we do we do a pic. It can be something technical related or not technical related, just something to has peeked our interest, and then we use that as our pick. So we'll throw out our picks. Then if there's something something for you that you would like to share with the listeners, we'll give you a chance to do that. Okay, all right, Jonathan, you want to kick us off?
Sure, I wasn't prepared. Actually, even though I reminded you, I wasn't prepared. But I guess I'll get with a pick. So I actually used to work for the company that makes the product with a pick. But my wife and I just bought our second Bugaboo stroller. Bugaboo makes really nice strollers, so we have one we had since my son was born almost a year ago, but we wanted a new one that's more compact because we just went on a long road trip and it was a little bit of a pain to put it in and out.
Of the trunk.
So Bugaboo has a new stroller called the Ant, which actually collapses into a size that we'll fit an overhead compartment on an airplane. So wow, we just got the stroller earlier this week, put it together and we haven't actually flown with it yet, but it looks nice. It's a sturdy stroller, it's nice quality staff. They are a little bit on the expensive side, but they are high
quality and they have a high resell value. So after your kids outgrow your your Buggaboo, you can resell it and get and recoup a big portion of your investment. So that's my pick for this week. Bugaboo.
Nice.
Yeah, and some of those are absolutely huge. They're like monster truck sized strollers.
They have.
They have a twin one that actually fits two kids next to it, So if you have twins or you have two children that are that are both stroller aids, they don't have to be the same same age, but you could have an infant with a two year old, for example, you can put them side by side. So yeah, they have quite a range of different options. Nice.
All right, So my pick for the week is going to be a non technical pick. It's a new book I picked up. Courage is calling Fortune Favors The Brave from Ryan Holiday and it's just getting started into it, but it's it's really cool. I've read multiple Ryan Holiday books and I think he always has does a great job of like relating everyday struggles back to like how philosophers would handle that, you know, and how to stick to your your moral code. And so this one, it's
actually recently written. It's very relevant to the world that we live in today, and I'm enjoying it. So if you're looking for like a how to guide for twenty twenty one and what comes into future, courage is calling Fortune Favors the Brave by Ryan Holiday, say.
How two for twenty twenty one? But you know how to have done it already one. Well, there's like two weeks left when this episode comes up.
Well, it could be a busy two weeks, it could be, all right, Danielle, how about you. You got anything to pick for us?
I'm good.
I'm waiting for some form arresting in the Crease Mass Holidays because I need that nice yes, yes, all right?
Cool. Well I think that's going to wrap up our episode. Danielle, thank you so much. This has been a really fun episode. It's been a really cool topic. I've enjoyed it.
Thank you really for this chat.
It was very very interesting and sorry for the technical problems with connection, but at the end, I'm very happy that.
We find a solution, this adventure develops.
Yeah, I mean that's what we do. Still solutions, right, sure.
It is what we do exactly. Okay, thank you, bye bye