Adriana geeks out with fellow Brazilian and Torontonian Renata Rocha of Slalom Build on being a sysadmin, platform engineering, AI, and work-life balance. Renata reminisces on her roots as a sysadmin, and how it shaped her current career in platform engineering. She also talks about embracing change, especially in the age of AI, urging listeners to embrace AI as an aid, rather than seeing it as a job threat. Finally, Renata shares some tips on achieving work-life balance, from using the Pomodoro Technique, to practicing Yoga.
About our guest:
Renata Rocha has been working with technology since 1997, first as a sysadmin. She then found her passion for Cloud Engineering and never looked back. She has been at Slalom since 2019 and loves everything about the Cloud, Platform Engineering, and the endless possibilities it brings us.
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Transcript:
ADRIANA: Hey, y'all. Welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery, DevOps, Observability, Reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And today geeking out with me, I have Renata Rocha. Welcome, Renata!
RENATA: Hi, nice to meet you. I'm Renata Rocha. I'm a principal of Cloud DevOps security, actually. Platform engineering with Slalom Build. I have been at Slalom since 2019. I love my job, I love what I do, and I love technology.
ADRIANA: Awesome. And where are you calling in from today?
RENATA: I am based off Toronto, Canada. Like Adriana. Okay. Yeah.
ADRIANA: Awesome. Yay fellow Torontonian, fellow Canadian and fellow Brazilian.
RENATA: Fellow Canadians and fellow Brazilian as well. Yes.
ADRIANA: All the things. All the things. Cool. Okay, so we're going to start up with some warm-up questions. First question, lefty or righty?
RENATA: I'm a lefty. I'm a very proud lefty. I do everything with my left hand. My right hand is absolutely useless.
ADRIANA: You're the first lefty that we've had, and I'm so happy to have a fellow lefty on the show because I, too, am a proud lefty. And International Lefty Day is on August 13.
RENATA: I did not know that. That makes total sense. By the way, awesome.
ADRIANA: Super excited for Lefty Day. I always forget about it until after the fact, so I'm hoping I'll observe it this year. So lefties unite.
RENATA: Lefties unite.
ADRIANA: Okay, next question. iPhone or Android?
RENATA: iPhone. It's interesting because I actually would prefer an Android, but it's been a while since they released a very small flagship Android phone. All the flagship Androids are huge, bulky phones and I have very tiny hands. Okay. So I have been an iPhone user because it's the smallest flagship phone I could find in the market. I would go back to an Android any day if they release a smallest Android flagship phone. Okay. Just because of that.
ADRIANA: Yeah, fair enough. I actually miss the really small phones. Do you remember those little tiny Nokiavphones that everyone used to have?
RENATA: Absolutely. I love those. Oh, yeah. They were so cute, right? Yeah. I'm under five foot tall. Okay. I'm very petite, so my tiny hands would rather have a small phone that fit into just one hand. I don't have, like, two hands to type. Yeah. They don't think about people like me when they design phones.
ADRIANA: Right? I do feel like we're outnumbered by taller people here in Canada. Awesome. Next question. Mac, linux or Windows?
RENATA: Oh, great question. I love Linux, but I have been a Mac user for a number of years. I think Mac offers a great desktop environment with also a great Unix like system. So I can do everything in terms of programming development on a Mac with a pretty environment in front of me. But for systems, my setup, my servers, they are all Linux, obviously. Windows is a no, no, I don't touch that. Okay.
ADRIANA: I'm kind of the same with you there, actually. I cry every time I have to touch a Windows machine. I'm sorry, Windows people, don't mean to offend, but it's just not my thing.
RENATA: Oh, my God, I feel no, no, I feel dirty. Okay. Yeah. Awful. Ewwww...
ADRIANA: Next question. Favorite programming language?
RENATA: Python. Absolutely.
ADRIANA: Me too. I love Python.
RENATA: Python is beautiful. It totally makes sense. I spent many years thinking, like, oh, my God, I hate programming. I hate programming. And then one day I discovered Python and it was like, okay. I love programming.
ADRIANA: Yeah, I agree. I feel it's like a pleasure to program in Python. It always makes me happy whenever I touch Python code, so I totally get you.
RENATA: Yeah.
ADRIANA: All right, next one. Dev or Ops?
RENATA: Oh, Ops. Yeah.
ADRIANA: I kind of figured.
RENATA: I come from a sysadmin background. Okay. I feel like inside of me there is a sysadmin. I will always be a sysadmin Okay. So Ops any day.
ADRIANA: And that will tie right nicely into our topic of discussion in a little bit. Okay, two more questions. I think I know the answer to this one. JSON or YAML?
RENATA: YAML Yeah. JSON is weird, and I think you can do pretty much everything with YAML. YAML is just easier, but I don't know, that's tough. Yeah, you kind of have to do it. That's my favorite thing. Can I just say HCL?
ADRIANA: Oh, yeah, I'm right there with you, actually, because I always tell people I feel like HCL is the love child of JSON and YAML, because I think it's got the nice organizational stuff of JSON without the clutter, which is what I like about YAML. It's uncluttered. So, yes, I am totally there with you.
RENATA: It just works, in my mind. The first time I saw HCL was like, yeah, this is right. This just rings a bell. And yeah, I love it. I think it's beautiful.
ADRIANA: Totally, totally agree. And for those who are not familiar with HCL, I think it stands for HashiCorp configuration...
RENATA: HashiCorp configuration language. I think that's what it stands for. Yeah.
ADRIANA: Yes, that's right. Which is used for all the Hashi products, which is super awesome. All right, final question.
RENATA: Sorry...
ADRIANA: Oh, no, go ahead, go ahead, finish the train of thought.
RENATA: I was just going to say that I'm a HashiCorp fan girl. Okay.
ADRIANA: You know what? I have become too, mostly. I know, like, you work with a lot of Terraform. For me, my HashiCorp fangirldom comes from working on Nomad, so I can totally relate.
RENATA: Yeah, Nomad, very underrated product.
ADRIANA: Very underrated. Totally agree. And maybe we can talk about that a little bit later as well. Final question. Do you prefer to consume content through video or through a blog?
RENATA: Yeah, a blog. Absolutely. I like reading stuff. Okay. The video things...sometimes I'm on the bed and it's late at night and I don't want sound, I don't want to see things. And on a blog, I can just read at my own pace. Yeah, I prefer reading stuff.
ADRIANA: Yeah, I'm the same way. Of all the people I've asked so far, everyone is like, blog over video, so I've yet to encounter a video person. I know they're out there but yeah, I've yet to encounter one.
RENATA: Yet you're making a video.
ADRIANA: But this is also going to be out in audio. So I guess then there's the question: audio versus video. I'm more of an audio person. Because then I can...I'm a podcast person, so I like to walk and listen to podcasts.
RENATA: Um, I like video. I need the visual cues. I don't...podcasts feel weird for me. I need to see people talking.
ADRIANA: Yeah, I can appreciate that. What I do like is video with subtitles.
RENATA: Oh, that is perfect. Video with subtitles. Yeah, that is...see, because you can read and then you can also see people's faces. Yeah.
ADRIANA: Yeah, I'm totally there with you. Cool. Well, let's move on to our main topic because, as you pointed out earlier, today is International Sysadmin Day. From your background as a sysadmin...
RENATA: Today is July 28th. It's the last Friday of July. It has been International sysadmin Appreciation Day since the year 2000. Like I said, I have been a sysadmin in the past. Then I moved to Cloud engineering, platform engineering...how we are doing it today. And I feel like these practices, they wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the sysadmins of the early days. We wouldn't have these things if it wasn't for systems administration. So Happy Sysadmin Day. Although we won't be seeing this video until later, but yeah, Sysadmin Day.
ADRIANA: Because you said Ops over Dev...What is it about sysadmin that you love so much that you think people really underappreciate?
RENATA: The thing that people don't see is when you are a very good sysadmin and you know what you're doing, your work is supposed to not be seen. Okay. The sysadmin is supposed to be invisible because the system just works. And the sysadmin is someone that is not there because you don't need to see them. You only notice your sysadmin when things crash, when things are wrong, when things are broken. So if you are good at your job, you're not appreciated, you are not seen, you are not present. Okay? So that is the interesting part of being in a sysadmin. But it's very satisfying to look at your uptime and see that your systems are up, that things are working, that things are just fine. Okay. I love seeing all my monitoring statistics and seeing yeah, everything is so finely tuned, everything is working so fine.
That ties a little bit into observability as well. Observability. I know you are an Observability person. Okay. So, yeah, like I said, everything I kind of branched off and became like a specialized feature of all the things that we used to do in systems. And today, of course, how computers evolved and how we do things these days. They became their own specific practices and fields in their own but I still love...I have this passion for the way it's a type of nostalgia in a certain way, of how we did things in the past. And this appreciation for people who are still managing systems, especially more old school systems are still in operation.
I know there are people who still manage mainframes these days and that's such hard work. Okay. It's amazing. Oh my God.
ADRIANA: It's a very specialized skill.
RENATA: Yes. And you don't find many of them. Okay. Yeah.
ADRIANA: Yeah. As a student...I don't talk about this much because it was very traumatic...but I had a summer job working in the mainframe department of RBC.
RENATA: My God.
ADRIANA: It was something...it was something...I will say in air quotes, a COBOL code change that it was like, I don't know, I think it was like commenting something out or whatever. And it took forever to push that through because you had the Job Control Language at the time. So the language to compile the language. And I was like, oh man. No, not for me.
RENATA: As someone who has also touched some COBOL calls back in the day...Yeah, I understand what you're saying. Yeah, I have some feelings. Like I said, nostalgia. Not necessarily want to go back there, but I'm going to say that I have played with some virtual instances running systems just for fun. Okay, yeah,
ADRIANA: Very cool. Very cool.
RENATA: Very cool. Yeah.
ADRIANA: So, as sysadmin, what do you think has been like the biggest change that you've seen over the years as technology has evolved? As your career has evolved?
RENATA: Sometimes I talk to people that I interview that are still working in systems and they are moving towards platform engineering. And what I think of what I used to do, and the biggest paradigm shift is that you used to log in directly into the machine and debug whatever was going wrong and fix it. So you had this control over each machine that you were running. You were very close to the system. To be quite honest with you. That feels very good. It gives you a sense of control.
And with Cloud and platform engineering, you don't do that anymore. You simply don't log into the machine anymore. And you have so many layers of abstraction, especially if you're running something like serverless code, something is broken, something is wrong. You just fix that on your Terraform code, for instance, and then you redeploy it. So you don't even go to the machine anymore. You just fix your code and you redeploy it and then it's back up online. So it is a different way of thinking on how you were going to troubleshoot the problems and how you were going to deal with whatever is running your code. So it works differently.
It's a lot of abstraction on top of it and you are not so close to the server as you used to be and you are probably going to miss it when you start working with so many abstraction in front of it. Okay, I understand that, and like I said, I miss it. It was fun. But at the same time, it gives you a lot of power because you had to go machine by machine to fix the problems and now you can fix the problem in hundreds of machines at the same time. And that is so amazing.
ADRIANA: It's so true. Yeah. Do you think that having been an old school sysadmin where you were physically touching your machines...do you think that gives you a better appreciation then for the types of things that are happening in the Cloud versus the newer folks coming into it who have not known sysadmin in that same way, where you're, like, sometimes going into a data center and physically touching a machine, do you think that gives you an advantage as a result?
RENATA: I hate saying better or advantage, but it gives me a different perspective. Okay. I work with a lot of people who have never been inside a data center in their lives. And when I tell them that, yeah, I used to work inside a data center and it's freezing cold, it's weird, there are like these noises and it's kind of soothing, the noise of a data center. Okay. You just have to wear a jacket because it's so cold and they're like, "Oh my God, did you work at a data center?" Like it was the craziest thing they've ever heard and yeah, it was a great job, by the way. I liked it very much.
Yeah, I would ride my bike to the office, if the data center was actually downtown. I would ride my bike there and then work there all day. We didn't have Windows because it was a data center. Felt like this box, like, surrounded by computers for hours. And then I would ride my bike back home. Yeah, great job. Loved it all. Lots of cables. It felt so Sci-Fi, so cyberpunk.
ADRIANA: If anyone ever has had an opportunity to work at a data center or tour a data center, it is surreal.
RENATA: It is surreal. Okay. It feels like living in the future. Okay. So disconnected from life. Like all the people walking around living their lives, and then suddenly you are in that box of computers. Right? Yeah. It's amazing.
ADRIANA: And you're holding the keys to the kingdom...to the computer kingdom, because you've got the admin passwords, you could do some serious damage
RENATA: Yeah.
ADRIANA: As an Admin, even as a Cloud engineer. Same sort of thing. But I think there's like a different...it's a different feeling.
RENATA: It is a different feeling. You have this power that like yeah, if you do something wrong, a lot of things go wrong, but at the same time, you feel so isolated from everything else that is around you because it's this black box, so completely separated from the life outside.
Like, I have the story that I was at the Shopify data center and there was a city-wide blackout that lasted maybe a couple of hours. And I didn't know it was happening because the data center has backup generators directly connected to whatever. And until someone told me, "Did you know there's a blackout happening outside city-wide?"
I was like, "No, I didn't realize that." Yeah. The entire city has lost power. Okay. Amazing. That's why I like working there.
ADRIANA: It's so true. I have a similar story because when Toronto had that big blackout in 2003, I think it might have been before you moved here, I believe, right?
RENATA: Yeah. It was before I moved here. Yeah.
ADRIANA: So in 2003, we had that massive blackout that lasted like a day and a bit. And I was working at a client site. The client at the time was Bell, and we were in the building next door to their Central Office. So the central office where they keep all their network equipment and stuff, like phone stuff, right? And so because we worked next door to the Central Office, we had the backup power as well, because the buildings were attached. So when there was the blackout, the lights blipped very quickly, and then it was all good. And so we're, like, keep on working. And then at the end of the work day, we start getting messages, like, there's no power in Toronto. We're like, "What?" Meanwhile, there's, like, power in the building. The elevators were still working. Everything was fine. And then you go outside, it's like complete chaos. Everything's out. Traffic lights, subways. Yeah, so yeah, the nice little bubble.
RENATA: The nice little bubble. Okay. And that feels very comforting. And like you said, it feels like a lot of power that you are in this place that has everything. It has like the fastest Internet access you can imagine. It has power even when the entire city is in a blackout. Yeah. It is fascinating. It is such a great experience. And although I don't feel I have an advantage or I feel better than the people who didn't have this experience, it gave me a different perspective. I feel like I have learned what I do today at a slower pace. And I saw the Internet growing since the very early days of the Internet, and I was inside. What was the Internet back in the day?
ADRIANA: Yeah. So true. Such a unique advantage that's something like, people from our generation, I feel like it's something that folks like, my daughter was born in 2008. She's grown up in a world with computers. It's ubiquitous. Smartphones. This is stuff where we're growing up along with it. It's like, oh, internet. Oh, cell phones. Oh, smartphones. We're all connected. Whoa, this is weird. Like, social media was not a thing when we were growing up. I mean, good luck trying to reach somebody. They're not home, you can't reach them. And you had to know people's phone numbers.
RENATA: Phone numbers? Yes. When I was a kid, we didn't even have phones. Landlines so easily this way. And a lot of people didn't have landlines. My husband only had a landline when he was like ten years old. People had to write letters to each other. Imagine that.
ADRIANA: I had a pen pal when I was growing up, and I totally remember my mom used to tell me stories of when we were living in Rio....I was too young to remember...but she was saying there was for a time we didn't have a phone yet, so she had to use the neighbor's phone to make phone calls. It was not the easiest thing to procure. It was, like, kind of a process to procure a phone line. And these are things we take for granted now.
RENATA: Yeah. Where my husband used to live, which was a neighborhood in Rio, Jacarepaguá. They had this phone in the center of the neighborhood where people used to go and make a call because people didn't have landlines where they lived. Yeah. Crazy. And you think of it like, oh, must have been like a very rural area. No, it was just like a normal neighborhood, actually. Kind of an upscale neighborhood. It was just because landlines were not everywhere back then. Okay. Not a lot of people had that.
ADRIANA: And I remember rotary dial phones when I was growing up in Rio, too, which, when I came here, i's like, "What? It's not rotary dial phones?" I still have fond memories of those.
RENATA: Can you hear the noise? (of rotary dial phones) I saw something fascinating recently. I went to a doctor's office here in Toronto, okay? And there was, like, this emergency phone, in the doctor's office, and it was a rotary phone, and there was a sign next to it teaching people how to use a rotary phone.
ADRIANA: So cute. The things we take for granted. We're like, "Of course! That's how you use a rotary phone. And people are like, "Uhhuuhh..."
RENATA: Yeah. Wait for the dialtone. After the dialtone, you put a finger on the number and to wait for it to come back. Good times.
ADRIANA: Good times. I kind of miss rotary dial problems. Yeah. Fun memories. Fun memories.
RENATA: They were cute. They were cute. Yeah. Yeah. We had a red one, like classic red rotary phone one.
ADRIANA: Oh, that's adorable. It's better than my beige one.
RENATA: Amazing. It was adorable. There was also the beige ones. They were also very classic. Yeah.
ADRIANA: Yes.
RENATA: But yeah, it's funny to see how things evolved, and they evolved very fast. And I think the beautiful thing about working in technology is how you see things going from, like, the old rotary phones and then the dial tone phones and then the Internet, which leads us to the different fields, the specializations we have on platform engineering, SRE, etc. And now the new field of AI that people are like, oh, my God, AI, etc.
It's just a new field, okay. And we need to learn how to deal with this new tool, this new technology, and how it ties together into the other things that we do. And that's the beauty of it. Right? This is why I do this. This is why I'm so fascinated by technology. I love learning things. I love being immersed in it, and I'm absolutely fascinated about learning whatever new thing, whatever new tool that people bring us today, tomorrow, next year.
ADRIANA: Yeah, I totally agree. It's interesting because I'm the same way. I'm like, "New technology. Giddy up. Give me more!" I want to learn more about it. And yet some people are so terrified of technology, and we see this across our industry. We see it especially, like, in large corporations, whenever there's big transformations, whether it's a digital transformation or DevOps, Agile, whatever, even bringing in Observability...there is such resistance to change that can get...it legitimately freaks people out, right? Because to a certain extent, I think we're creatures of comfort, and we like what we know and understand, and having to deal with something that's a brand new learning curve can be terrifying.
But what kind of advice do you have for people who find themselves in this scary place where they're resisting change.
RENATA: Try to find yourself in a place which is 50% comfort and 50% challenge. Okay? That's a very good measure of what will bring yourself still that cozy space where you feel, yeah, this is good. This gives me this warm heart, this warm embrace of things that I'm comfortable with, but also doesn't make you bored, because once you get bored, you don't have anything to look forward to. And this is what makes us human, okay? If we didn't have any challenges, if we didn't have anything to look forward, any goals in life, we would still be living in the Middle Ages. We would still be cooking...eating raw food. We wouldn't be working with computers today. And that's what makes us different from other animals, is what makes us special. Okay? Yeah. This is pretty much what I try to tell people that find that sweet balance of comfort and challenge, because also, if you do challenges all the time, you're going to burn out. You're going to exhaust yourself. It's unsustainable. So find exactly how much comfort you can at the same time while finding that amount of challenge that makes you want to do something new.
ADRIANA: Yeah, I totally agree. That's such a great approach because that way, as you said, you're not, like, going all in on it, and then that can be super overwhelming. But getting to a point where it's just like, oh, okay, this is interesting enough. I'm going to poke into it and kind of build on it. Iteratively, I think, is a really great way to approach it.
And I think in technology, I feel like because, the nature of what we do, it evolves so rapidly, it can be very overwhelming. So I think people get freaked out. Oh, my God, there's another thing that's changing, another thing I have to learn. So I think to a certain extent, you kind of have to just pick a thing that's interesting, that like, okay, I'll dig into this a little bit more, and then dig into that and get into this habit of always learning a bit. And I think what people freak out with is they think they have to learn all the things.
I resigned to myself, to the fact that I don't know everything. I'll never know everything. But I surround myself with people who know things, and that's okay.
RENATA: You don't have to know everything. It's impossible to know everything. And you will never be an expert on anything because things evolve very fast. And like I said, before, technology is very dynamic. What you know today is never going to be what is the new technology, new big new thing of tomorrow. So what you have to do is to pick something that you want. Okay, go choose. I want to learn Terraform. Something that I don't know.
Okay, I know Terraform, but just an example. I want to learn TerraForm. It is something that I'm interested. Just pick and choose and learn a little bit. Don't throw yourself in like, "I'm going to learn everything about Terraform today." I tend to do that.
So that's some advice for myself. Yeah, I'm totally like that.
So learn a little bit of it today and then give myself some time. Tomorrow I'm going to do something that I'm comfortable with and then learn a little bit extra. Just iterative process of learning so I don't exhaust myself. And also it gives your brain some time to absorb the knowledge. You don't feel exhausted, you don't feel burned out. The burnout is real. I always tell especially young people because they feel they are indestructible and they can learn everything everywhere, all the time.
And then sometimes the burnout kicks in and they feel, "Oh my God, I cannot learn anything anymore and I hate this. I will move to a cabin in the woods and never see people ever again."
This happened to me and that's why I keep telling people that it will happen if you don't take care of yourself. Please take care of yourself. It will happen. So give yourself some time. Go slowly, slow, easy, and yeah, just pick a subject here and there. You don't have to learn everything.
And also no one expects you to know everything because we know it's impossible to know everything.
ADRIANA: Yeah, I totally agree. And I want to go back to your comment earlier about burnout, because I agree with you. When you're young...first of all, when you're young, you feel like you're indestructible, invincible. But also, employers take advantage of that, too. They're like, "Well, you don't have a family. You don't have a social life. You just finished university. Of course you can go and put in the long hours."
And I think it's so important for younger folks to give themselves permission to not do all the things, to take it easy, to not have to hustle so hard that they burn out. Because the same thing happened to me when I finished school.
My first role out of school was so intense that I burnt out really fast and I hated my life. But the only good thing that came out of it was I learned to say no, and I learned to defend myself and stick up for myself in terms of, like, I've had it. Burnout. My brain doesn't work. Need to take a step back. And I think more young people need to do that. Just because you are young, don't have a family, whatever, don't have a partner, does not mean that you don't deserve to have a life.
RENATA: Yeah. My suggestion is always to find an offline hobby.
ADRIANA: Yes.
RENATA: Something that is completely unrelated to your work. Learn to run, to climb, to do Yoga, to paint. Go learn to play the drums and musical instruments. Something that is completely unrelated to your work. You don't need to do some unpaid work. That's what I'm trying to say.
ADRIANA: I totally agree. What's your go to activity?
RENATA: I like to run, I like to cycle. I do Yoga, I have a garden in the summer. I have a ton of activities that I do that are completely unrelated to work. And they help me not think about work. They make me healthy, they make me happy. They make me a person that is not only the Renata who is at work, the Renata platform engineer. I am a more complete person and I'm also happier. I have a life that stops at 5:00 pm.
ADRIANA: That's such great advice. I totally agree. Because of my ADHD, I get the hyper focus, and so I have a really hard time peeling myself away from things, and I tend to obsess over unsolved problems and can't shut it off. And sometimes I have to take myself aside and say, "I give you permission to not think about work, to disconnect." And it's okay to give yourself permission to shut off and pursue your things. Like, life is not all about work. It's going to be there tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that. I think employers are just looking to make sure that you complete your deliverables, that you're reliable. And I feel like if you do those things, then you're in a good position.
RENATA: It...I also find that once I started taking care of my mental and physical health after work and not dedicating myself to working 15 hours a day, which I was doing, at some point I became much more productive at work.
ADRIANA: Yes.
RENATA: Which kind of makes sense if you think about it. But when you're younger, you don't think about it because I'm healthier. My mind is healthier. My body is healthier. So when I start my day in the morning, I can kick right in, start working, do a lot of things. I can concentrate much better. I haven't been sick in years, and I used to get sick a lot more. I just work better if I do this. My hours in a day are in a better person that can do just work for those hours a day. And I was so drained out by the burnout that I was not giving myself fully to work during those during those 15 hours that I was working before. So, there's that.
ADRIANA: Yeah. I find also, like, the act of time boxing your day. You're like, holy shit, I got to get all this stuff done by 05:00. So you're like, okay, I'm going to be super efficient, right? Because you want to get as much done as possible, and then it's like and plus you have something to look forward to. At the end of the day, it's like, hey, there's like, relaxation on the horizon. It's awesome.
RENATA: Yes, absolutely. When I have to deliver something and I have a deadline, I like to use a technique called Pomodoro. Some people are very familiar with it. You do 25 minutes of work, and then you stop for five, and then you do another 25. And after some four of 25, you give yourself a longer break that allows your brain to process the work that you did some rest. And it makes me feel way more productive because I just focus and just works very well for some type of people. It works for me. And if you're listening, and you are not familiar with the Pomodoro technique, there are some timers you can use on your browser or on your code editor. Give it a try. It might work for you as well.
ADRIANA: That is very cool, I hadn't heard of that. But I definitely...like, taking the breaks is so important. And again, ADHD brain is like, you will not get up from this until you solve this problem. But whenever I do force myself to walk away and take a break and I come back, I'm like, oh, shit, I should have done this before.
RENATA: Try the Pomodoro. Okay. Because they force you to take a break every 25 minutes, and it's a 5 minutes break. And then when you come back, you're like, "Oh, okay, I can pick this up again." Okay. It's not a long break. It's 5 minutes. Okay? Usually I just do maybe like, some Yoga poses for five minutes, and then I go back. I love Yoga. It's a great thing for my mind. It makes me relax. And then I come back, and then I do it again, and then I keep doing that, and I don't know, I just write code beautifully when I do this.
ADRIANA: Yeah, I'm going to check that out because that sounds like something I could use. And also, I'm a huge fan of Yoga. I don't think I'm nearly as advanced in Yoga as you are. My flexibility is crap, but I do enjoy it. It's nice to it challenges your brain because you're so busy trying to hold the poses, you can't think about anything else. So I think it's a lovely way to just unwind.
RENATA: Yoga, as with anything...technology...is not about the flexibility. It's about the inner journey, okay? It's about learning, understanding your body and where you are today. It doesn't matter where you were or just where you were going. Think about yourself, your inner body, where your balance is. So don't think about anything else. It's not about flexibility. It's just about the journey. So if you enjoy it, that's what matters.
ADRIANA: Yeah, that's actually a really good point, because when I first started Yoga, I see it really mad that I was like, I look like shit doing these poses. Right? And then I'm like it's okay.
RENATA: Yeah, exactly. No one cares.
ADRIANA: As soon as I got over that...nobody cares, especially when I do it at home, nobody's watching. So it's great. And you start to see some progress. I mean, you're competing against yourself, which I think is probably the most important thing. Are you improving? Are you getting something out of it? Are you enjoying it?
RENATA: That's why good Yoga studios won't have a mirror, because you're not supposed to look at yourself. It's just supposed to feel yourself.
ADRIANA: Oh, that's cool. Good to know.
RENATA: I like it very much.
ADRIANA: Yeah, I'm a huge fan. I try to do Yoga, like, once a week, and I feel it too. If I don't do it, the joints feel a little stiffer. I'm like, oh, I think I needed this.
RENATA: Focus on the breathing techniques. They really help me when I'm feeling stressed out. When I am obsessing over a problem, I just try to focus, recenter, breathe. And that sometimes helps me solve some piece of code that I cannot point or like some architecture that I'm struggling to design. I have a huge problem using diagramming tools. Sometimes I have the idea on my mind, but I don't know where to position things correctly. And then I stop. Take a deep breath. Okay. Do some breathing exercise. And when I look at the diagram again, I'm like, oh, yeah, here, write this.
ADRIANA: Yeah. The power of stepping away, taking a mental break from your work, cannot be underscored. It cannot be underestimated. Awesome. Switching gears a little bit. Well, I guess going back to something that you talked about earlier, the idea of embracing the new technologies that come our way and of course, the new and cool technology that is taking the world by storm now that everyone's talking about and either excited about or feeling threatened by is AI. So what is your take on AI?
RENATA: I have a hot take about AI, which is it's not going to take away any jobs. It's going to be exactly like Cloud was a few years ago. It's going to create a lot of new jobs. AI doesn't create itself. It's not actually artificial intelligence. That's just like a cool name for it. There are lots of people working to generate those libraries. You've deployed the code, so it actually requires a lot of people, qualified people, engineers develop that. So it is a whole new field that's open for you. It's fascinating. It's very early days, so yeah, it's going to create a lot of new jobs. So if we embrace it with open arms and open mind, it's exactly like when Cloud was born that people were scared, oh my God, it's going to take away jobs and look at where we are today. So embrace it, learn it. It's great. It's going to be good for us. Just don't be afraid because it's a new technology. It's just a tool. It's not something bad or crazy. Yeah, that's my hot take about AI. It's just a tool.
ADRIANA: Yeah, I totally agree with you. I totally agree with you. And I think, like, with any new tools, it can be abused or it can be used to really enhance your job. And I think folks who end up using AI tocheat at their jobs or cheat at work, right? Like using AI to write an essay, you're doing yourself a disservice because then you're not learning. I mean, you lose out in the end. Fine, you get the marks, but you still can't write. Versus using AI as an aid.
Like, the example that I like to give is, like, you're writing something, you've written something out, but there's like a character limit. Feed your text into AI to like, hey, can you rewrite this so that it fits within the character limit? I feel like that's a perfectly valid use case for AI, because you wrote it, the concepts are there. It came from your brain. But AI has just taken that little extra burden off of you so that you can complete that last step where you can use AI as, like, inspiration, as a starting point for code. If you don't know a particular language, but you know how to code, but you don't know the nuances of that language. So AI can give you that starting point, but you still have to complete it.
RENATA: You can use it as, like, a skeleton generator. Okay. But you still have to refine the results, and you have to analyze it to make sure that the generated content makes sense. So if you don't know if it makes sense, it could have generated something that is useless, something that's bad, something that won't work. So a great idea, like something that I suggest to people is ask AI to generate a recipe for bread. Something simple as a recipe for bread. Try to make that bread. Sometimes it won't work. Okay. Because anything that's bread related, it's kind of tricky.
ADRIANA: It's voodoo. Yeah. Bread can be tricky, for sure.
RENATA: Yeah, sometimes it won't work. Maybe it will work, but you can't be sure unless you have made bread before.
ADRIANA: Yeah, that's so true. And it's interesting, too, because even if you've not made bread before, right? And then you take the AI recipe, try to make bread, it fails.Then you can use that as a springboard to like...but why did it fail? Then you can do some additional research, right? So still need to use your brain there, which I think that's at the end of the day, the important thing, right?
Even the AI prompt engineer, when I first heard this idea of a prompt engineer, honestly, I thought it was funny. But it's in the same way that we, as software engineers or ops folks, whatever, SREs when we're trying to solve a technical problem, we're going on Stack Overflow, we're trying to, you know ask Google,like, figure out how to phrase the question correctly in Google, making sure that you're even asking the correct question. And I feel like when working with AI, it's a similar sort of concept.
RENATA: If you think about the prompt engineer, which is someone adjusting the prompts they feed to AI to get the correct results, isn't that very similar to platform engineering, adjusting Terraform code to generate the correct results on the Cloud compared to what we used to do as a system in that we wouldgo directly into the machine. That is a hot take.
ADRIANA: That is a hot take. I like it. I like it. That is a very cool way of looking at it.
RENATA: Yeah. So maybe that is the new job, the prompt engineering, that's a new career path that someone will follow, probably in data engineering, and I'm excited to see what comes of it. I am very open to new tech and seeing what the world brings us.
ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. I'm right there with you. I think prompt engineering can be very fun. Yeah. And don't be afraid of AI. I think there's some cool things that can come of it. It can really help with our jobs, and it'll be exciting to see where it takes us. I was talking to someone yesterday about AI, and I'm like, oh, could we ever find ourselves ina position where we end up with Skynet? And you always think about these things, but...
RENATA: I don't think so. I love terminator.
ADRIANA: I love terminator too. I always think of Terminator whenever this AI stuff's coming about.
RENATA: It is human enhancer.
ADRIANA: I'm like, "All hail our Evil Robot Overlords. Here we go." But I think there are some exciting times. There's some cool stuff to come out of it. AI is a human enhancer.
RENATA: I like that. Yeah, it's a good approach. I don't think we are quite ready for Skynet. It's going to take, I don't know, maybe 1000 years for us to reach Skynet level of things. Yeah.
ADRIANA: Yeah. Hopefully we won't get to Skynet levels. Fingers crossed. Well, we are just coming up on time, but thank you, Renata, so much for geeking out with me today. Do you have any parting words of wisdom to share with folks out there?
RENATA: Yeah, well, just don't be afraid. Embrace new tech. As I usually say, stronger people build a stronger world. And peace out and geek out.
ADRIANA: Thank you so much. And y'all, don't forget to subscribe. Be sure to check out the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and with our guests on social media. Thank you so much for joining us today.
RENATA: Thank you for inviting me today.
ADRIANA: Geeking Out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Villela. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking Out is also produced by my daughter, Hannah Maxwell, who, incidentally, designed all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the socials by going to bento.me/geekingout.
ADRIANA: Hey, y'all. Welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery, DevOps, Observability, Reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And today geeking out with me, I have Renata Rocha. Welcome, Renata!
RENATA: Hi, nice to meet you. I'm Renata Rocha. I'm a principal of Cloud DevOps security, actually. Platform engineering with Slalom Build. I have been at Slalom since 2019. I love my job, I love what I do, and I love technology.
ADRIANA: Awesome. And where are you calling in from today?
RENATA: I am based off Toronto, Canada. Like Adriana. Okay. Yeah.
ADRIANA: Awesome. Yay fellow Torontonian, fellow Canadian and fellow Brazilian.
RENATA: Fellow Canadians and fellow Brazilian as well. Yes.
ADRIANA: All the things. All the things. Cool. Okay, so we're going to start up with some warm-up questions. First question, lefty or righty?
RENATA: I'm a lefty. I'm a very proud lefty. I do everything with my left hand. My right hand is absolutely useless.
ADRIANA: You're the first lefty that we've had, and I'm so happy to have a fellow lefty on the show because I, too, am a proud lefty. And International Lefty Day is on August 13.
RENATA: I did not know that. That makes total sense. By the way, awesome.
ADRIANA: Super excited for Lefty Day. I always forget about it until after the fact, so I'm hoping I'll observe it this year. So lefties unite.
RENATA: Lefties unite.
ADRIANA: Okay, next question. iPhone or Android?
RENATA: iPhone. It's interesting because I actually would prefer an Android, but it's been a while since they released a very small flagship Android phone. All the flagship Androids are huge, bulky phones and I have very tiny hands. Okay. So I have been an iPhone user because it's the smallest flagship phone I could find in the market. I would go back to an Android any day if they release a smallest Android flagship phone. Okay. Just because of that.
ADRIANA: Yeah, fair enough. I actually miss the really small phones. Do you remember those little tiny Nokiavphones that everyone used to have?
RENATA: Absolutely. I love those. Oh, yeah. They were so cute, right? Yeah. I'm under five foot tall. Okay. I'm very petite, so my tiny hands would rather have a small phone that fit into just one hand. I don't have, like, two hands to type. Yeah. They don't think about people like me when they design phones.
ADRIANA: Right? I do feel like we're outnumbered by taller people here in Canada. Awesome. Next question. Mac, linux or Windows?
RENATA: Oh, great question. I love Linux, but I have been a Mac user for a number of years. I think Mac offers a great desktop environment with also a great Unix like system. So I can do everything in terms of programming development on a Mac with a pretty environment in front of me. But for systems, my setup, my servers, they are all Linux, obviously. Windows is a no, no, I don't touch that. Okay.
ADRIANA: I'm kind of the same with you there, actually. I cry every time I have to touch a Windows machine. I'm sorry, Windows people, don't mean to offend, but it's just not my thing.
RENATA: Oh, my God, I feel no, no, I feel dirty. Okay. Yeah. Awful. Ewwww...
ADRIANA: Next question. Favorite programming language?
RENATA: Python. Absolutely.
ADRIANA: Me too. I love Python.
RENATA: Python is beautiful. It totally makes sense. I spent many years thinking, like, oh, my God, I hate programming. I hate programming. And then one day I discovered Python and it was like, okay. I love programming.
ADRIANA: Yeah, I agree. I feel it's like a pleasure to program in Python. It always makes me happy whenever I touch Python code, so I totally get you.
RENATA: Yeah.
ADRIANA: All right, next one. Dev or Ops?
RENATA: Oh, Ops. Yeah.
ADRIANA: I kind of figured.
RENATA: I come from a sysadmin background. Okay. I feel like inside of me there is a sysadmin. I will always be a sysadmin Okay. So Ops any day.
ADRIANA: And that will tie right nicely into our topic of discussion in a little bit. Okay, two more questions. I think I know the answer to this one. JSON or YAML?
RENATA: YAML Yeah. JSON is weird, and I think you can do pretty much everything with YAML. YAML is just easier, but I don't know, that's tough. Yeah, you kind of have to do it. That's my favorite thing. Can I just say HCL?
ADRIANA: Oh, yeah, I'm right there with you, actually, because I always tell people I feel like HCL is the love child of JSON and YAML, because I think it's got the nice organizational stuff of JSON without the clutter, which is what I like about YAML. It's uncluttered. So, yes, I am totally there with you.
RENATA: It just works, in my mind. The first time I saw HCL was like, yeah, this is right. This just rings a bell. And yeah, I love it. I think it's beautiful.
ADRIANA: Totally, totally agree. And for those who are not familiar with HCL, I think it stands for HashiCorp configuration...
RENATA: HashiCorp configuration language. I think that's what it stands for. Yeah.
ADRIANA: Yes, that's right. Which is used for all the Hashi products, which is super awesome. All right, final question.
RENATA: Sorry...
ADRIANA: Oh, no, go ahead, go ahead, finish the train of thought.
RENATA: I was just going to say that I'm a HashiCorp fan girl. Okay.
ADRIANA: You know what? I have become too, mostly. I know, like, you work with a lot of Terraform. For me, my HashiCorp fangirldom comes from working on Nomad, so I can totally relate.
RENATA: Yeah, Nomad, very underrated product.
ADRIANA: Very underrated. Totally agree. And maybe we can talk about that a little bit later as well. Final question. Do you prefer to consume content through video or through a blog?
RENATA: Yeah, a blog. Absolutely. I like reading stuff. Okay. The video things...sometimes I'm on the bed and it's late at night and I don't want sound, I don't want to see things. And on a blog, I can just read at my own pace. Yeah, I prefer reading stuff.
ADRIANA: Yeah, I'm the same way. Of all the people I've asked so far, everyone is like, blog over video, so I've yet to encounter a video person. I know they're out there but yeah, I've yet to encounter one.
RENATA: Yet you're making a video.
ADRIANA: But this is also going to be out in audio. So I guess then there's the question: audio versus video. I'm more of an audio person. Because then I can...I'm a podcast person, so I like to walk and listen to podcasts.
RENATA: Um, I like video. I need the visual cues. I don't...podcasts feel weird for me. I need to see people talking.
ADRIANA: Yeah, I can appreciate that. What I do like is video with subtitles.
RENATA: Oh, that is perfect. Video with subtitles. Yeah, that is...see, because you can read and then you can also see people's faces. Yeah.
ADRIANA: Yeah, I'm totally there with you. Cool. Well, let's move on to our main topic because, as you pointed out earlier, today is International Sysadmin Day. From your background as a sysadmin...
RENATA: Today is July 28th. It's the last Friday of July. It has been International sysadmin Appreciation Day since the year 2000. Like I said, I have been a sysadmin in the past. Then I moved to Cloud engineering, platform engineering...how we are doing it today. And I feel like these practices, they wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the sysadmins of the early days. We wouldn't have these things if it wasn't for systems administration. So Happy Sysadmin Day. Although we won't be seeing this video until later, but yeah, Sysadmin Day.
ADRIANA: Because you said Ops over Dev...What is it about sysadmin that you love so much that you think people really underappreciate?
RENATA: The thing that people don't see is when you are a very good sysadmin and you know what you're doing, your work is supposed to not be seen. Okay. The sysadmin is supposed to be invisible because the system just works. And the sysadmin is someone that is not there because you don't need to see them. You only notice your sysadmin when things crash, when things are wrong, when things are broken. So if you are good at your job, you're not appreciated, you are not seen, you are not present. Okay? So that is the interesting part of being in a sysadmin. But it's very satisfying to look at your uptime and see that your systems are up, that things are working, that things are just fine. Okay. I love seeing all my monitoring statistics and seeing yeah, everything is so finely tuned, everything is working so fine.
That ties a little bit into observability as well. Observability. I know you are an Observability person. Okay. So, yeah, like I said, everything I kind of branched off and became like a specialized feature of all the things that we used to do in systems. And today, of course, how computers evolved and how we do things these days. They became their own specific practices and fields in their own but I still love...I have this passion for the way it's a type of nostalgia in a certain way, of how we did things in the past. And this appreciation for people who are still managing systems, especially more old school systems are still in operation.
I know there are people who still manage mainframes these days and that's such hard work. Okay. It's amazing. Oh my God.
ADRIANA: It's a very specialized skill.
RENATA: Yes. And you don't find many of them. Okay. Yeah.
ADRIANA: Yeah. As a student...I don't talk about this much because it was very traumatic...but I had a summer job working in the mainframe department of RBC.
RENATA: My God.
ADRIANA: It was something...it was something...I will say in air quotes, a COBOL code change that it was like, I don't know, I think it was like commenting something out or whatever. And it took forever to push that through because you had the Job Control Language at the time. So the language to compile the language. And I was like, oh man. No, not for me.
RENATA: As someone who has also touched some COBOL calls back in the day...Yeah, I understand what you're saying. Yeah, I have some feelings. Like I said, nostalgia. Not necessarily want to go back there, but I'm going to say that I have played with some virtual instances running systems just for fun. Okay, yeah,
ADRIANA: Very cool. Very cool.
RENATA: Very cool. Yeah.
ADRIANA: So, as sysadmin, what do you think has been like the biggest change that you've seen over the years as technology has evolved? As your career has evolved?
RENATA: Sometimes I talk to people that I interview that are still working in systems and they are moving towards platform engineering. And what I think of what I used to do, and the biggest paradigm shift is that you used to log in directly into the machine and debug whatever was going wrong and fix it. So you had this control over each machine that you were running. You were very close to the system. To be quite honest with you. That feels very good. It gives you a sense of control.
And with Cloud and platform engineering, you don't do that anymore. You simply don't log into the machine anymore. And you have so many layers of abstraction, especially if you're running something like serverless code, something is broken, something is wrong. You just fix that on your Terraform code, for instance, and then you redeploy it. So you don't even go to the machine anymore. You just fix your code and you redeploy it and then it's back up online. So it is a different way of thinking on how you were going to troubleshoot the problems and how you were going to deal with whatever is running your code. So it works differently.
It's a lot of abstraction on top of it and you are not so close to the server as you used to be and you are probably going to miss it when you start working with so many abstraction in front of it. Okay, I understand that, and like I said, I miss it. It was fun. But at the same time, it gives you a lot of power because you had to go machine by machine to fix the problems and now you can fix the problem in hundreds of machines at the same time. And that is so amazing.
ADRIANA: It's so true. Yeah. Do you think that having been an old school sysadmin where you were physically touching your machines...do you think that gives you a better appreciation then for the types of things that are happening in the Cloud versus the newer folks coming into it who have not known sysadmin in that same way, where you're, like, sometimes going into a data center and physically touching a machine, do you think that gives you an advantage as a result?
RENATA: I hate saying better or advantage, but it gives me a different perspective. Okay. I work with a lot of people who have never been inside a data center in their lives. And when I tell them that, yeah, I used to work inside a data center and it's freezing cold, it's weird, there are like these noises and it's kind of soothing, the noise of a data center. Okay. You just have to wear a jacket because it's so cold and they're like, "Oh my God, did you work at a data center?" Like it was the craziest thing they've ever heard and yeah, it was a great job, by the way. I liked it very much.
Yeah, I would ride my bike to the office, if the data center was actually downtown. I would ride my bike there and then work there all day. We didn't have Windows because it was a data center. Felt like this box, like, surrounded by computers for hours. And then I would ride my bike back home. Yeah, great job. Loved it all. Lots of cables. It felt so Sci-Fi, so cyberpunk.
ADRIANA: If anyone ever has had an opportunity to work at a data center or tour a data center, it is surreal.
RENATA: It is surreal. Okay. It feels like living in the future. Okay. So disconnected from life. Like all the people walking around living their lives, and then suddenly you are in that box of computers. Right? Yeah. It's amazing.
ADRIANA: And you're holding the keys to the kingdom...to the computer kingdom, because you've got the admin passwords, you could do some serious damage
RENATA: Yeah.
ADRIANA: As an Admin, even as a Cloud engineer. Same sort of thing. But I think there's like a different...it's a different feeling.
RENATA: It is a different feeling. You have this power that like yeah, if you do something wrong, a lot of things go wrong, but at the same time, you feel so isolated from everything else that is around you because it's this black box, so completely separated from the life outside.
Like, I have the story that I was at the Shopify data center and there was a city-wide blackout that lasted maybe a couple of hours. And I didn't know it was happening because the data center has backup generators directly connected to whatever. And until someone told me, "Did you know there's a blackout happening outside city-wide?"
I was like, "No, I didn't realize that." Yeah. The entire city has lost power. Okay. Amazing. That's why I like working there.
ADRIANA: It's so true. I have a similar story because when Toronto had that big blackout in 2003, I think it might have been before you moved here, I believe, right?
RENATA: Yeah. It was before I moved here. Yeah.
ADRIANA: So in 2003, we had that massive blackout that lasted like a day and a bit. And I was working at a client site. The client at the time was Bell, and we were in the building next door to their Central Office. So the central office where they keep all their network equipment and stuff, like phone stuff, right? And so because we worked next door to the Central Office, we had the backup power as well, because the buildings were attached. So when there was the blackout, the lights blipped very quickly, and then it was all good. And so we're, like, keep on working. And then at the end of the work day, we start getting messages, like, there's no power in Toronto. We're like, "What?" Meanwhile, there's, like, power in the building. The elevators were still working. Everything was fine. And then you go outside, it's like complete chaos. Everything's out. Traffic lights, subways. Yeah, so yeah, the nice little bubble.
RENATA: The nice little bubble. Okay. And that feels very comforting. And like you said, it feels like a lot of power that you are in this place that has everything. It has like the fastest Internet access you can imagine. It has power even when the entire city is in a blackout. Yeah. It is fascinating. It is such a great experience. And although I don't feel I have an advantage or I feel better than the people who didn't have this experience, it gave me a different perspective. I feel like I have learned what I do today at a slower pace. And I saw the Internet growing since the very early days of the Internet, and I was inside. What was the Internet back in the day?
ADRIANA: Yeah. So true. Such a unique advantage that's something like, people from our generation, I feel like it's something that folks like, my daughter was born in 2008. She's grown up in a world with computers. It's ubiquitous. Smartphones. This is stuff where we're growing up along with it. It's like, oh, internet. Oh, cell phones. Oh, smartphones. We're all connected. Whoa, this is weird. Like, social media was not a thing when we were growing up. I mean, good luck trying to reach somebody. They're not home, you can't reach them. And you had to know people's phone numbers.
RENATA: Phone numbers? Yes. When I was a kid, we didn't even have phones. Landlines so easily this way. And a lot of people didn't have landlines. My husband only had a landline when he was like ten years old. People had to write letters to each other. Imagine that.
ADRIANA: I had a pen pal when I was growing up, and I totally remember my mom used to tell me stories of when we were living in Rio....I was too young to remember...but she was saying there was for a time we didn't have a phone yet, so she had to use the neighbor's phone to make phone calls. It was not the easiest thing to procure. It was, like, kind of a process to procure a phone line. And these are things we take for granted now.
RENATA: Yeah. Where my husband used to live, which was a neighborhood in Rio, Jacarepaguá. They had this phone in the center of the neighborhood where people used to go and make a call because people didn't have landlines where they lived. Yeah. Crazy. And you think of it like, oh, must have been like a very rural area. No, it was just like a normal neighborhood, actually. Kind of an upscale neighborhood. It was just because landlines were not everywhere back then. Okay. Not a lot of people had that.
ADRIANA: And I remember rotary dial phones when I was growing up in Rio, too, which, when I came here, i's like, "What? It's not rotary dial phones?" I still have fond memories of those.
RENATA: Can you hear the noise? (of rotary dial phones) I saw something fascinating recently. I went to a doctor's office here in Toronto, okay? And there was, like, this emergency phone, in the doctor's office, and it was a rotary phone, and there was a sign next to it teaching people how to use a rotary phone.
ADRIANA: So cute. The things we take for granted. We're like, "Of course! That's how you use a rotary phone. And people are like, "Uhhuuhh..."
RENATA: Yeah. Wait for the dialtone. After the dialtone, you put a finger on the number and to wait for it to come back. Good times.
ADRIANA: Good times. I kind of miss rotary dial problems. Yeah. Fun memories. Fun memories.
RENATA: They were cute. They were cute. Yeah. Yeah. We had a red one, like classic red rotary phone one.
ADRIANA: Oh, that's adorable. It's better than my beige one.
RENATA: Amazing. It was adorable. There was also the beige ones. They were also very classic. Yeah.
ADRIANA: Yes.
RENATA: But yeah, it's funny to see how things evolved, and they evolved very fast. And I think the beautiful thing about working in technology is how you see things going from, like, the old rotary phones and then the dial tone phones and then the Internet, which leads us to the different fields, the specializations we have on platform engineering, SRE, etc. And now the new field of AI that people are like, oh, my God, AI, etc.
It's just a new field, okay. And we need to learn how to deal with this new tool, this new technology, and how it ties together into the other things that we do. And that's the beauty of it. Right? This is why I do this. This is why I'm so fascinated by technology. I love learning things. I love being immersed in it, and I'm absolutely fascinated about learning whatever new thing, whatever new tool that people bring us today, tomorrow, next year.
ADRIANA: Yeah, I totally agree. It's interesting because I'm the same way. I'm like, "New technology. Giddy up. Give me more!" I want to learn more about it. And yet some people are so terrified of technology, and we see this across our industry. We see it especially, like, in large corporations, whenever there's big transformations, whether it's a digital transformation or DevOps, Agile, whatever, even bringing in Observability...there is such resistance to change that can get...it legitimately freaks people out, right? Because to a certain extent, I think we're creatures of comfort, and we like what we know and understand, and having to deal with something that's a brand new learning curve can be terrifying.
But what kind of advice do you have for people who find themselves in this scary place where they're resisting change.
RENATA: Try to find yourself in a place which is 50% comfort and 50% challenge. Okay? That's a very good measure of what will bring yourself still that cozy space where you feel, yeah, this is good. This gives me this warm heart, this warm embrace of things that I'm comfortable with, but also doesn't make you bored, because once you get bored, you don't have anything to look forward to. And this is what makes us human, okay? If we didn't have any challenges, if we didn't have anything to look forward, any goals in life, we would still be living in the Middle Ages. We would still be cooking...eating raw food. We wouldn't be working with computers today. And that's what makes us different from other animals, is what makes us special. Okay? Yeah. This is pretty much what I try to tell people that find that sweet balance of comfort and challenge, because also, if you do challenges all the time, you're going to burn out. You're going to exhaust yourself. It's unsustainable. So find exactly how much comfort you can at the same time while finding that amount of challenge that makes you want to do something new.
ADRIANA: Yeah, I totally agree. That's such a great approach because that way, as you said, you're not, like, going all in on it, and then that can be super overwhelming. But getting to a point where it's just like, oh, okay, this is interesting enough. I'm going to poke into it and kind of build on it. Iteratively, I think, is a really great way to approach it.
And I think in technology, I feel like because, the nature of what we do, it evolves so rapidly, it can be very overwhelming. So I think people get freaked out. Oh, my God, there's another thing that's changing, another thing I have to learn. So I think to a certain extent, you kind of have to just pick a thing that's interesting, that like, okay, I'll dig into this a little bit more, and then dig into that and get into this habit of always learning a bit. And I think what people freak out with is they think they have to learn all the things.
I resigned to myself, to the fact that I don't know everything. I'll never know everything. But I surround myself with people who know things, and that's okay.
RENATA: You don't have to know everything. It's impossible to know everything. And you will never be an expert on anything because things evolve very fast. And like I said, before, technology is very dynamic. What you know today is never going to be what is the new technology, new big new thing of tomorrow. So what you have to do is to pick something that you want. Okay, go choose. I want to learn Terraform. Something that I don't know.
Okay, I know Terraform, but just an example. I want to learn TerraForm. It is something that I'm interested. Just pick and choose and learn a little bit. Don't throw yourself in like, "I'm going to learn everything about Terraform today." I tend to do that.
So that's some advice for myself. Yeah, I'm totally like that.
So learn a little bit of it today and then give myself some time. Tomorrow I'm going to do something that I'm comfortable with and then learn a little bit extra. Just iterative process of learning so I don't exhaust myself. And also it gives your brain some time to absorb the knowledge. You don't feel exhausted, you don't feel burned out. The burnout is real. I always tell especially young people because they feel they are indestructible and they can learn everything everywhere, all the time.
And then sometimes the burnout kicks in and they feel, "Oh my God, I cannot learn anything anymore and I hate this. I will move to a cabin in the woods and never see people ever again."
This happened to me and that's why I keep telling people that it will happen if you don't take care of yourself. Please take care of yourself. It will happen. So give yourself some time. Go slowly, slow, easy, and yeah, just pick a subject here and there. You don't have to learn everything.
And also no one expects you to know everything because we know it's impossible to know everything.
ADRIANA: Yeah, I totally agree. And I want to go back to your comment earlier about burnout, because I agree with you. When you're young...first of all, when you're young, you feel like you're indestructible, invincible. But also, employers take advantage of that, too. They're like, "Well, you don't have a family. You don't have a social life. You just finished university. Of course you can go and put in the long hours."
And I think it's so important for younger folks to give themselves permission to not do all the things, to take it easy, to not have to hustle so hard that they burn out. Because the same thing happened to me when I finished school.
My first role out of school was so intense that I burnt out really fast and I hated my life. But the only good thing that came out of it was I learned to say no, and I learned to defend myself and stick up for myself in terms of, like, I've had it. Burnout. My brain doesn't work. Need to take a step back. And I think more young people need to do that. Just because you are young, don't have a family, whatever, don't have a partner, does not mean that you don't deserve to have a life.
RENATA: Yeah. My suggestion is always to find an offline hobby.
ADRIANA: Yes.
RENATA: Something that is completely unrelated to your work. Learn to run, to climb, to do Yoga, to paint. Go learn to play the drums and musical instruments. Something that is completely unrelated to your work. You don't need to do some unpaid work. That's what I'm trying to say.
ADRIANA: I totally agree. What's your go to activity?
RENATA: I like to run, I like to cycle. I do Yoga, I have a garden in the summer. I have a ton of activities that I do that are completely unrelated to work. And they help me not think about work. They make me healthy, they make me happy. They make me a person that is not only the Renata who is at work, the Renata platform engineer. I am a more complete person and I'm also happier. I have a life that stops at 5:00 pm.
ADRIANA: That's such great advice. I totally agree. Because of my ADHD, I get the hyper focus, and so I have a really hard time peeling myself away from things, and I tend to obsess over unsolved problems and can't shut it off. And sometimes I have to take myself aside and say, "I give you permission to not think about work, to disconnect." And it's okay to give yourself permission to shut off and pursue your things. Like, life is not all about work. It's going to be there tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that. I think employers are just looking to make sure that you complete your deliverables, that you're reliable. And I feel like if you do those things, then you're in a good position.
RENATA: It...I also find that once I started taking care of my mental and physical health after work and not dedicating myself to working 15 hours a day, which I was doing, at some point I became much more productive at work.
ADRIANA: Yes.
RENATA: Which kind of makes sense if you think about it. But when you're younger, you don't think about it because I'm healthier. My mind is healthier. My body is healthier. So when I start my day in the morning, I can kick right in, start working, do a lot of things. I can concentrate much better. I haven't been sick in years, and I used to get sick a lot more. I just work better if I do this. My hours in a day are in a better person that can do just work for those hours a day. And I was so drained out by the burnout that I was not giving myself fully to work during those during those 15 hours that I was working before. So, there's that.
ADRIANA: Yeah. I find also, like, the act of time boxing your day. You're like, holy shit, I got to get all this stuff done by 05:00. So you're like, okay, I'm going to be super efficient, right? Because you want to get as much done as possible, and then it's like and plus you have something to look forward to. At the end of the day, it's like, hey, there's like, relaxation on the horizon. It's awesome.
RENATA: Yes, absolutely. When I have to deliver something and I have a deadline, I like to use a technique called Pomodoro. Some people are very familiar with it. You do 25 minutes of work, and then you stop for five, and then you do another 25. And after some four of 25, you give yourself a longer break that allows your brain to process the work that you did some rest. And it makes me feel way more productive because I just focus and just works very well for some type of people. It works for me. And if you're listening, and you are not familiar with the Pomodoro technique, there are some timers you can use on your browser or on your code editor. Give it a try. It might work for you as well.
ADRIANA: That is very cool, I hadn't heard of that. But I definitely...like, taking the breaks is so important. And again, ADHD brain is like, you will not get up from this until you solve this problem. But whenever I do force myself to walk away and take a break and I come back, I'm like, oh, shit, I should have done this before.
RENATA: Try the Pomodoro. Okay. Because they force you to take a break every 25 minutes, and it's a 5 minutes break. And then when you come back, you're like, "Oh, okay, I can pick this up again." Okay. It's not a long break. It's 5 minutes. Okay? Usually I just do maybe like, some Yoga poses for five minutes, and then I go back. I love Yoga. It's a great thing for my mind. It makes me relax. And then I come back, and then I do it again, and then I keep doing that, and I don't know, I just write code beautifully when I do this.
ADRIANA: Yeah, I'm going to check that out because that sounds like something I could use. And also, I'm a huge fan of Yoga. I don't think I'm nearly as advanced in Yoga as you are. My flexibility is crap, but I do enjoy it. It's nice to it challenges your brain because you're so busy trying to hold the poses, you can't think about anything else. So I think it's a lovely way to just unwind.
RENATA: Yoga, as with anything...technology...is not about the flexibility. It's about the inner journey, okay? It's about learning, understanding your body and where you are today. It doesn't matter where you were or just where you were going. Think about yourself, your inner body, where your balance is. So don't think about anything else. It's not about flexibility. It's just about the journey. So if you enjoy it, that's what matters.
ADRIANA: Yeah, that's actually a really good point, because when I first started Yoga, I see it really mad that I was like, I look like shit doing these poses. Right? And then I'm like it's okay.
RENATA: Yeah, exactly. No one cares.
ADRIANA: As soon as I got over that...nobody cares, especially when I do it at home, nobody's watching. So it's great. And you start to see some progress. I mean, you're competing against yourself, which I think is probably the most important thing. Are you improving? Are you getting something out of it? Are you enjoying it?
RENATA: That's why good Yoga studios won't have a mirror, because you're not supposed to look at yourself. It's just supposed to feel yourself.
ADRIANA: Oh, that's cool. Good to know.
RENATA: I like it very much.
ADRIANA: Yeah, I'm a huge fan. I try to do Yoga, like, once a week, and I feel it too. If I don't do it, the joints feel a little stiffer. I'm like, oh, I think I needed this.
RENATA: Focus on the breathing techniques. They really help me when I'm feeling stressed out. When I am obsessing over a problem, I just try to focus, recenter, breathe. And that sometimes helps me solve some piece of code that I cannot point or like some architecture that I'm struggling to design. I have a huge problem using diagramming tools. Sometimes I have the idea on my mind, but I don't know where to position things correctly. And then I stop. Take a deep breath. Okay. Do some breathing exercise. And when I look at the diagram again, I'm like, oh, yeah, here, write this.
ADRIANA: Yeah. The power of stepping away, taking a mental break from your work, cannot be underscored. It cannot be underestimated. Awesome. Switching gears a little bit. Well, I guess going back to something that you talked about earlier, the idea of embracing the new technologies that come our way and of course, the new and cool technology that is taking the world by storm now that everyone's talking about and either excited about or feeling threatened by is AI. So what is your take on AI?
RENATA: I have a hot take about AI, which is it's not going to take away any jobs. It's going to be exactly like Cloud was a few years ago. It's going to create a lot of new jobs. AI doesn't create itself. It's not actually artificial intelligence. That's just like a cool name for it. There are lots of people working to generate those libraries. You've deployed the code, so it actually requires a lot of people, qualified people, engineers develop that. So it is a whole new field that's open for you. It's fascinating. It's very early days, so yeah, it's going to create a lot of new jobs. So if we embrace it with open arms and open mind, it's exactly like when Cloud was born that people were scared, oh my God, it's going to take away jobs and look at where we are today. So embrace it, learn it. It's great. It's going to be good for us. Just don't be afraid because it's a new technology. It's just a tool. It's not something bad or crazy. Yeah, that's my hot take about AI. It's just a tool.
ADRIANA: Yeah, I totally agree with you. I totally agree with you. And I think, like, with any new tools, it can be abused or it can be used to really enhance your job. And I think folks who end up using AI tocheat at their jobs or cheat at work, right? Like using AI to write an essay, you're doing yourself a disservice because then you're not learning. I mean, you lose out in the end. Fine, you get the marks, but you still can't write. Versus using AI as an aid.
Like, the example that I like to give is, like, you're writing something, you've written something out, but there's like a character limit. Feed your text into AI to like, hey, can you rewrite this so that it fits within the character limit? I feel like that's a perfectly valid use case for AI, because you wrote it, the concepts are there. It came from your brain. But AI has just taken that little extra burden off of you so that you can complete that last step where you can use AI as, like, inspiration, as a starting point for code. If you don't know a particular language, but you know how to code, but you don't know the nuances of that language. So AI can give you that starting point, but you still have to complete it.
RENATA: You can use it as, like, a skeleton generator. Okay. But you still have to refine the results, and you have to analyze it to make sure that the generated content makes sense. So if you don't know if it makes sense, it could have generated something that is useless, something that's bad, something that won't work. So a great idea, like something that I suggest to people is ask AI to generate a recipe for bread. Something simple as a recipe for bread. Try to make that bread. Sometimes it won't work. Okay. Because anything that's bread related, it's kind of tricky.
ADRIANA: It's voodoo. Yeah. Bread can be tricky, for sure.
RENATA: Yeah, sometimes it won't work. Maybe it will work, but you can't be sure unless you have made bread before.
ADRIANA: Yeah, that's so true. And it's interesting, too, because even if you've not made bread before, right? And then you take the AI recipe, try to make bread, it fails.Then you can use that as a springboard to like...but why did it fail? Then you can do some additional research, right? So still need to use your brain there, which I think that's at the end of the day, the important thing, right?
Even the AI prompt engineer, when I first heard this idea of a prompt engineer, honestly, I thought it was funny. But it's in the same way that we, as software engineers or ops folks, whatever, SREs when we're trying to solve a technical problem, we're going on Stack Overflow, we're trying to, you know ask Google,like, figure out how to phrase the question correctly in Google, making sure that you're even asking the correct question. And I feel like when working with AI, it's a similar sort of concept.
RENATA: If you think about the prompt engineer, which is someone adjusting the prompts they feed to AI to get the correct results, isn't that very similar to platform engineering, adjusting Terraform code to generate the correct results on the Cloud compared to what we used to do as a system in that we wouldgo directly into the machine. That is a hot take.
ADRIANA: That is a hot take. I like it. I like it. That is a very cool way of looking at it.
RENATA: Yeah. So maybe that is the new job, the prompt engineering, that's a new career path that someone will follow, probably in data engineering, and I'm excited to see what comes of it. I am very open to new tech and seeing what the world brings us.
ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. I'm right there with you. I think prompt engineering can be very fun. Yeah. And don't be afraid of AI. I think there's some cool things that can come of it. It can really help with our jobs, and it'll be exciting to see where it takes us. I was talking to someone yesterday about AI, and I'm like, oh, could we ever find ourselves ina position where we end up with Skynet? And you always think about these things, but...
RENATA: I don't think so. I love terminator.
ADRIANA: I love terminator too. I always think of Terminator whenever this AI stuff's coming about.
RENATA: It is human enhancer.
ADRIANA: I'm like, "All hail our Evil Robot Overlords. Here we go." But I think there are some exciting times. There's some cool stuff to come out of it. AI is a human enhancer.
RENATA: I like that. Yeah, it's a good approach. I don't think we are quite ready for Skynet. It's going to take, I don't know, maybe 1000 years for us to reach Skynet level of things. Yeah.
ADRIANA: Yeah. Hopefully we won't get to Skynet levels. Fingers crossed. Well, we are just coming up on time, but thank you, Renata, so much for geeking out with me today. Do you have any parting words of wisdom to share with folks out there?
RENATA: Yeah, well, just don't be afraid. Embrace new tech. As I usually say, stronger people build a stronger world. And peace out and geek out.
ADRIANA: Thank you so much. And y'all, don't forget to subscribe. Be sure to check out the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and with our guests on social media. Thank you so much for joining us today.
RENATA: Thank you for inviting me today.
ADRIANA: Geeking Out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Villela. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking Out is also produced by my daughter, Hannah Maxwell, who, incidentally, designed all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the socials by going to bento.me/geekingout.