The One Where We Geek Out on the Power of Invisibility with Deana Solis

Key takeaways:

• It's important for junior folks to have a breadth of experience early in their careers to understand what they like and don't like, and to help shape what they want to do in their tech careers.
• Developers can't work in isolation and not care about the "big picture" of the product or service that they're working on. That's like moving to a new country and not caring about the cultural differences.
• Being invisible is a superpower, because it allows you to quietly learn, observe, and take things in.
• Being a quiet listener shouldn't be confounded with not speaking up due to shyness.
• It's important to use your voice to speak up and provide a safe place for others to speak up
• We get into tech through different ways, have different skills, and different experiences, and these differences are what make for a successful team.
• There's not one way to succeed and make an impact in tech (and other professions), whether you're in upper management, an engineer, or anything in-between.
• As a senior person, you can also learn a lot from junior engineers and mid-level engineers, bringing in a different point of view
• Mentoring is about helping your mentees find their own strengths, and also learning from your mentees, as they always have something interesting to bring to the table.
• If you're going to be a manager, you've got to be really understanding of what your organization's strategic direction is, what its vision is, what its values truly are, and decide are you aligned enough to be able to represent that as a manager?
• University is a humbling experience of suddenly being surrounded by way smarter people than you
• There are different skills to being a student vs being an employee
• There is a distinction between FinOps for the Cloud and "traditional" FinOps!
• Someone who works in FinOps (within the context of Cloud) has an understanding of how cloud vendors work and how things like workload, retention policies, autoscaling thresholds, etc. affect your cloud spend.

About our guest:

Deana Solis is the youngest daughter of Filipino immigrants and the mom of a biracial son. She credits her decades long career in tech for teaching her how to unplug from the grid in meaningful ways, connect with her ancestors, build community where she lives, and leave places better than she found them.

She is a FinOps Foundation ambassador and mentor, known for her contributions in workgroups, certification curriculum, and humanizing FinOps talks.

Find our guest on:

• LinkedIn
• Bluesky

Find us on:

• All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
• All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show notes:

• Carmen Huidobro on Geeking Out, talking about reframing nervousness
• Ixchel Ruiz on Geeking Out, talking about the importance of seeing people like us being represented
• Aicha Laafia on Geeking Out (she was directly inspired by Ixchel Ruiz's talks)
• Charity Majors on Geeking Out
• Kelsey Hightower on Geeking Out
• Liz Fong-Jones on Geeking Out
• What is FinOps?
• FP&A
• Comptroller

Transcript:
ADRIANA:
Hey everyone, welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast in which we dive into the career journeys of some of the amazing humans in tech and geek out on topics like software development, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada.

ADRIANA:
And geeking out with me today I have Deana Solis. Welcome, Deana!

DEANA:
Thank you. Happy to be here.

ADRIANA:
And where are you calling from?

DEANA:
I'm in Vancouver, Washington.

ADRIANA:
Oh, cool. That's awesome. So before, before I introed you in, we were talking about pronouncing names, and, I thought it was interesting, so I wanted to bring it up on the podcast because I thought your name was pronounced “De-anna”, but it's actually “Dean-a”. And tell the story behind that, because I thought it was kind of cool.

DEANA:
You know, I have always blamed this on my dad because I knew the story. They were Rat Pack fans, and Dean Martin, was a favorite. My dad was a big audiophile. We had his records, so I just blamed him. It turns out that my mom was the big Dean Martin fan. She picked the name, and had I been a boy, I would have been Dean. But I wasn’t. So Deana.

ADRIANA:
That is so cool. I love that that's such a great name origin story.

DEANA:
But considering my last name and you pronounced that exactly correctly, it's perfectly acceptable to expect to pronounce it Deanna or Deanna, with all the syllables. But it's not. So.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Fair, fair. Well, I mean, I think it's a it's a really great way to remember, though, in, in terms of pronouncing your name like, oh, I always think of like the Dean Martin reference. That's awesome. Well, so are you ready for our icebreaker questions?

DEANA:
Yes.

ADRIANA:
AV: Okay. First question. Are you a lefty or a righty?

DEANA:
Lefty.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, I always get... you... if you watch the show, you know, I always get excited about lefties. Were you ever, did anyone ever try to force you, to write right handed when you were growing up? Or, like, try to change anything about your leftiness?

DEANA:
Fortunately, in that area, no. However, I am somewhat ambidextrous. Like in sports. I think I'm I'm somewhat I'm ambidextrous. I throw right-handed. In basketball you wouldn't know which which I favor. But in, in baseball I would left because the coaches told me that was an advantage. And, so I could adapt and I had to throw right handed because like, in my first couple of years of that sport, I didn't buy my own glove. I got the hand-me-down. And also I am disproportionately surrounded by other left handers.

ADRIANA:
Oh no way. That is super cool.

DEANA:
Yeah. My my partner and his oldest son. My best friend's husband. Yeah, it's just funny.

ADRIANA:
Wow. One comment I was going to make because you said that you're, like, ambidextrous. For certain things, I tend to be, I tend to be left handed for most things, but for whatever reason, archery. Not not that I have done archery often, but when I've picked up a bow and arrow, I do it the right handed way. And my daughter, who is right handed, does it the left handed way.

DEANA:
Oh that's interesting. My son's an archer.

ADRIANA:
Oh, really? That's cool.

DEANA:
He's done that thing where he has, hit the bull's eye and then split it with his next arrow.

ADRIANA:
He can do that?

DEANA:
I don't know how close he was, but even close distance, that's not easy to do. And, I'm. I'm kind of proud of that. I had nothing to do with it.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, that is a cool skill. Just one more thing. One more curiosity on the left handed thread. Do you mouse left or right handed?

DEANA:
Oh, well, so I don't, I, what is it? Trackpad. What do you call it?

ADRIANA:
Yeah, trackpad. Do you trackpad left or right handed?

DEANA:
I think mostly right. Me too. Yeah. Me too, I, I tried, like because that's how I learned, like, when a mouse was presented to me and, you know, my, my dad's the techie in the, in the family. So he introduced me to a mouse and I'm like, so I picked it up with my, with my right hand. And I could not even fathom using a left handed mouse.

DEANA:
But do you do, like, multiple monitors?

ADRIANA:
Sometimes. Sometimes.

DEANA:
So I have found that when I'm moving windows around, or. Yeah, windows from one monitor to another or just from one side of the screen to another. I tend to be a two handed trackpad.

ADRIANA:
Oh!

DEANA:
You can, you know, continue to swipe while you're, without letting go of a thing. And I just, I wish I could teach it, but I don't know how I do it.

ADRIANA:
I've done that on occasion. Not necessarily with dragging monitors, but like, I know what you're talking about. It comes in handy Do you prefer iPhone or Android?

DEANA:
I think that I can adapt to either one, but I've owned far more iPhones. But hopefully, you know, my frequency of changing them is much less. And I'd be open to to trying one of the Androids because I have seen some really interesting products, but I probably get like a, a couple of generations old one.

ADRIANA:
Okay. Next question. Do you prefer Mac, Linux or Windows?

DEANA:
I don't think I could live without all three. Because I do quite a bit in the Azure space. And so, being closer to the, the Microsoft ecosystem, and all my keyboard shortcuts that are muscle memory are from Windows. And I love my Mac. It's a design thing, but it's kind of a privilege to be able to answer that question at all.

ADRIANA:
And that's good. Yeah, that's I, I like that.

DEANA:
And the Linux thing, you know, all the workloads that scale and that, that I'm, that my clients are using. You know, I wouldn't I wouldn't have a job if there weren't a ton of, of Linux workloads. I haven't been on a Linux desktop since 1999. So that was when I it pretty much lost its, its like, shine as, as a, as a personal, operating system for, for, for me. But, I will say that I still have my last Windows laptop from a few years ago that, you know, it can't be updated anymore. And I keep it around thinking, just maybe I could just put a Linux OS on there and give it a new life.

ADRIANA:
Ooh, yes, that sounds like a fun little side project. Yeah.

DEANA:
In all my free time.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I gotta gotta find that time first. Right? Okay. Next question. Do you have a favorite programing language?

DEANA:
I do not. I think I told you, I, I never contributed, any code to to an open source project or I, I'm, I generally don't write it. Maybe policies, some YAML things and, and, edit existing Python scripts or, but that I'm more... since I have an app... ops background, I'm more comfortable with Python or I think I, I tried to learn Ruby and then the, the project that I was specifically learning it for completely changed directions in terms of like the whole pipeline, the whole toolchain changed and it was like, okay, drop that, learn this. And then also your role is going to change because we really need someone to, to, know about this particular skill set. And so, so it was just more in my wheelhouse and didn't go back to it. I just always sort of thought, okay, I'm going to finish that, that beginner Python course. But I don't need it to do the job that that my role is defined for.

ADRIANA:
That's cool, that's cool. Next question. Do you prefer dev or ops? I think I might know your answer.

DEANA:
Ops is obviously my comfort zone, and I'm such a process person. But I'm finding more and more that I need to lean into the dev, because those are processes that I'm starting to understand in terms of what drives businesses and what drives value. And so I, I it's the area where I would tend to lean, but they are definitely, inseparable. The more a company leans toward one or the other and says, oh no, we can have a vendor do that or we can outsource that. The less healthy I think it is in the long term for that organizational culture.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, I, I agree with you. And, you know, this brings up something that I've had a debate with, with some people on. I think I've even posted a thing on LinkedIn a while back, which is, you know, having devs be aware, more concerned or have knowledge, high level knowledge of, of ops things and vice versa. Right. Which, you know, in, in some ways I, I suppose we require ops people to be more versed in the dev world because of things like infrastructure as code, right, where you're really bringing those software engineering principles into the ops world. And yet you don't see as much of, like, you meet some developers who are like, I'm just going to write my code. I don't care how it's containerized. I don't care what happens after I deliver my code. What, do you have any interesting thoughts on that?

DEANA:
I really do think that when, when you're a junior dev or a junior, technologist, you know, just let's take the devs and the ops out of it. When you're, a junior software engineer getting into it and thinking, well, which direction am I going to go in? You absolutely need to do a rotation and see what actually fits your your strength and your biases or your heuristics, whatever the internals, that, where you can lean into your strengths and get some confidence so that you can then tackle the next thing. Or recognize that, oh, okay, this is really challenging for me. You've got to be able to rotate through both. When you're dealing with senior folks who have done it a certain way, if they're able to isolate, there's not a whole lot of value in trying to pull them into from one into the other. I don't actually see the sort of dichotomy that you described. I see more of whichever one you're in because I, I am in, a more split organization. And I think the bigger the enterprise is, you tend to see a lot more division of, of, labor in the roles in the way that the roles are defined.

ADRIANA:
Very true.

DEANA:
And I think that the folks who are, if you're in ops now, you need to have that enough of the dev to be able to function. Because it's moving so fast. You cannot be like me in, in the early 2000s with a dozen SSH terminals. Hitting enter, just in the right sequence. Because that's what you had to do without, without a control plane. So yeah, absolutely. The ops folks have to have that as a minimum. But I don't think that that, devs who want to like, software developers who are actually trying to make their product more effective, they have to be just as conscious of, at the very least, what their, what their organization, what their client prefers, because it's sort of like moving to a new country and and not caring, about cultural differences. It's because because there are going to be some assumptions that you should know about when you start thinking like, what am I optimizing for? You know, I am... like most of my job is optimizing something. And and what people don't realize, it's, you can optimize for competing things. You have to remember which one you picked when you got to that fork in the road. And for a software developer who cares about speed, it might not be as important to understand how their platform that they're developing, that they're going to deploy from, operates scale. Right. So yeah, I, I see that as being such an important way to, grow in your, in your own skill is to understand how the stuff you do interacts with the ground you’re standing on.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Well, thanks for thanks for sharing your take on this. Next question. Do you prefer JSON or YAML?

DEANA:
So the the JSON files that I, that I deal with, like on a regular basis are things that are outputs. You know, they're things that I read, and I can convert it to a CSV or, you know, depending on, on what the, what the use case is and who the end user is that needs that data. It may not always be another, another programmer. It may not be another application that's pulling that in. It's just that's how the output came out... Because we have no idea who developed that last application or that last, little function that put it out. And so this is what we've got. How do we convert it to what we need. And so that's sort of been my my area of dealing with it. YAML files can be tiny and it can just be a rule set and it can be... either one is is somewhat readable. But but that's coming from someone who likes to read spreadsheets. So.

ADRIANA:
I don't mind spreadsheets. I don't mind spreadsheets. Like, I'll, I'll read like CSV if it's in a spreadsheet for like, you know, open it in Excel. Good. I'm good. Okay. Next question. Do you prefer spaces or tabs? Do you have a preference?

DEANA:
I don’t have preference, I don't even know what I, I think the whatever the the IDE is, tells me which one is the one I'm supposed to use.

ADRIANA:
Fair enough, fair enough. Two more questions. Do you prefer to consume content through video or text?

DEANA:
I'm one of those auditory learners. And I don't even know if I definitely need both. And I, I tend to put a lot of content in writing more than I would in video. But I do consume probably more video because I can do it at double speed or podcasts at double speed because I just, I need to know if the information is there. Yeah. And while I'm looking at something else or while I'm. I'm, walking or driving. And I can, I can process it that way. Whereas if I'm sitting down to read it, I better have time, because I think I'm a slower reader and reading is just never it's never as, sticky as I need it to be.

ADRIANA:
Right, right.

DEANA:
But if something comes without any documentation, I will dismiss it and go to a better source. I need recommendation to sort of prove it out to me so I can, I can, see if I would write it differently or, if my memory matches, the words.

ADRIANA:
Yep, that makes sense. It's interesting what you were saying about, you know, putting podcasts on, on double speed. Like, I love listening to podcasts. I'm a huge podcast junkie. Like, I'll have a podcast on while I'm, like, brushing my teeth or, like, doing stuff around the house. But there is one thing I can't do, which is put podcasts on double speed. It like it breaks my brain. I start when I accidentally hit like the faster speed setting on my podcast. I'm like, what is going on?

DEANA:
You know, on my iPhone, on the YouTube app, when I'm, watching video content. I know that I can just hold my thumb down on the screen and it automatically goes to double speed. And that is probably my my favorite feature of having that app on my phone. And it's probably comes from my impatience with people in conversations. Not this one, but.

ADRIANA:
I, I, I know exactly what you mean. It's like, get to the point. I prefer reading over, over video. And for similar reasons. I feel like when I, when I watch a video, I need to like carve out time. But I'm also like too ADHD to pay attention to the video. And for reading I love skimming and, and you know, it's like, okay, just get me to the point where I need to get to.

DEANA:
I think maybe growing up in a household where, where two languages were spoken, but not by me. I heard Tagalog. My parents are Filipino. I heard it spoken a lot, and often directly to me and my siblings, but I didn't have to respond in it, I responded in English. So I think, I think because... maybe that set my brain up to be really sensitive to, are they talking to me? And so the way that a word is set or I listen to tone, I love video too. If it's like this, where I can actually look at you and say, okay, the the head nods and the body language. But where the video is, something on a stage far away. I will just I'll listen to audio only, and I will miss that screen and just not even pay attention to the slides. I'll just be listening for... for tone and, words that I have not heard before, or words that are used in a way that I'm not used to using them. You know, there's so many reused and overused terms. Just from, you know, are you talking about the the function or the application vendor that just came out with a new thing? And they'll, they will have used the same, same term. I can't think of one right now.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. No, I know what exactly what your, what you mean. And that, of course, adds to, that adds to confusion. Okay. Final question. What's your superpower?

DEANA:
I thought about this one a lot because I hear it. I think I've heard people ask it and I've been asked for a long time. And, you know, I think when you're asked in an interview, you think of, you try to think of something to impress them. I think that superpowers come from recognizing what your vulnerability is. That makes you different. And understanding all of the ways that you can use it to make everything else you care about, doing, make that better. And I think that I have landed on the same one that I used to use, which is invisibility, because sometimes when I'm in a room, people don't realize that I'm listening and gathering information. And recently, I heard it. Heard being invisible being compared to, the CIA. You know, they're never, they're not supposed to be visible. They can't really do their job gathering intelligence if they're super visible. I think in the observability space and in the... in my area, the FinOps space. You know, we don't want our tools and our processes to be in the front. They should just be quietly doing their jobs. And I think that that's kind of how I've spent a lot of my career, is just quietly doing the job and learning and understanding when, when, I needed to adjust. And so that invisibility has let me go into spaces and, and make observations that maybe I wouldn't have been able to before. When I learned to sort of turn it on and turn it off, that's when it became a superpower. When I learned to start being visible, start using my voice. In fact, that's when I realized, oh, this is this is actually a strength.

ADRIANA:
Wow. I love that so much. I first of all, I love your definition of what a superpower is. That's amazing. And secondly, invisibility. I think that's the first time we've had that on, on the podcast. And it's so true. There's something to be said about just being the the quiet listener. And then, as you said, to be able to turn it off and on as needed. Because I think being the quiet listener shouldn't be confounded with being too afraid to speak up. Which, unfortunately, you know, a lot of us get get caught up in that. Especially, I have to say, especially for women, you know, I feel like I have to sort of just remind myself, you know, like, I have a seat at the table. I deserve to be here. I should speak up if I have something to say.

DEANA:
It is intertwined with, the imposter syndrome that people say, oh, you've got imposter syndrome, or that we that that label that we put on ourselves when, when really something about, growing up, kind of being taught to be invisible. You would think that that's a very negative thing. But everyone, all of my, my ancestors, my, my elders who who taught me to, not be visible did it from a place of love. They did it from a place of wanting me to be protected from not wanting to stand out in a way that as women as, sometimes coming from marginalized communities, just speaking up and having an opinion, can have us be perceived as threatening or disruptive when actually, you know, that different perspective is something that it might make you better if you can listen to it, if you can find some, you know, some new wisdom, and, you know, and, and in our, in our, our, respective fields, the intelligence that the business actually needs.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And there's something to be said for, like, just sitting down, listening, taking in the information before you do something with it. Right? Because I think, we tend to see a lot of, like, you hear blah. And it's like, I got my response ready to go, right? It's like, let's pounce on that right away. And it's like, no, no, no, let's, let's listen to the story. And and to be fair, I think it's, it's it's an acquired skill. Right. Listening is a, an acquired skill. I think it comes naturally to some. But to most it's probably very difficult because we want to say... we have opinions on things. Right.

DEANA:
It can be learned and it can be practiced. And, I think that, you know, I've, I mentioned I surround myself myself with left handers, but I also I'm kind of disproportionately surrounded by extroverts. And so as an introvert, I have to practice the, the skills that extroverts just find natural and, you know, don't understand why I didn't speak up earlier in my career or when I thought that speaking up would make me, vulnerable. Well, you've just got to you've just got to assert yourself. You've got to be outgoing, you've got to make those connections. And really, it didn't serve me, or I knew it wouldn't serve me because I hadn't had the practice. And it was only, I think, when I felt called to do my part as a senior engineer, on a team where, you know, we'd had some women rotate in and, and sort of leave and never be heard from again. You know, I was looking around and thinking, wait, why? Why is there only one of us in a room at a time? Why are there only one of 1 or 2 of us at a really bigger room at a time? What am I doing or not doing... to reach out and make those connections and, And let them know that they're not alone and that their opinions do matter. And also connect with them and see if, if they're experiencing something that I experienced sometimes, which is, is, having an opinion heard and then, and not really valued until someone else says the same thing.

ADRIANA:
Right? Yeah. I think that's that's the most aggravating thing ever.

DEANA:
When I started speaking out, because I had a little bit more job security, a little bit more confidence in where I was at my career, when I started, you know, talking about my experiences and saying, hey, yeah, this happens, just happen to anyone else in the room. And to have a bunch of women say, oh, yeah, that's happened to me. That sort of reinforcement told me I'd been quiet too long. I'm not going to do that anymore. So it was a sort of new set of skills that helped me get out of the, timid, sort of natural comfort state of of being quiet and listening and say, okay, this this is where it becomes a superpower. This is where if I don't use my voice, no one else is going to, because no one else in the room, thinks it's safe or no one else in the room has actually experienced it because I'm the only woman, or that I'm the only brown person, or I'm the only.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah.

DEANA:
Yeah, I'm I'm the only one who's five foot tall walking around with a bunch of giants.

ADRIANA:
I feel that so hard. Yeah. I'm like five, three. So. And and it it's sometimes daunting. I don't know if you've ever experienced this, but, like, you know, when you have the floor and you're speaking in an audience, like, not even necessarily like in front of larger audience, but like in a meeting room and all of a sudden, like, people are paying attention to you, I don't know, I sometimes I in my head I'm like, oh shit, they're all listening to what I have to say. Oh crap, what if I say something stupid?

DEANA:
Oh, I mean, it happened earlier in this call. You you were asking a question. I'm like, oh my gosh, I have so many thoughts. I didn't want to get my answer wrong because I feel like this might be the only time they hear me say it. So I want to say it right.

ADRIANA:
Yes.

DEANA:
And I think, I don't know how long you've been doing public speaking, but I've only maybe the last five years. Six, if that. And really, you know, the smaller groups are always where I'm more comfortable. Please don't put me on a big stage. If you do, I'm going to say I'm going to call it out, that I'm nervous and that my heart is beating. Could you come back to me? That's happened. It's on. It's on YouTube somewhere.

ADRIANA:
It's it's daunting. I mean, like, especially when you're not, like, not mentally prepared for for certain interactions. Like, I was... there's a panel I was moderating... moderating a couple of weeks back and one of the, one of the panelists turned to me and like asked a question to me. I'm like, I'm going. And panic. Panic set in. I'm like, I'm I'm going to defer the question to somebody else to answer because I wasn't I wasn't prepared to be called on. And then of course, then for the rest of the evening, I'm like, oh my god, do they think I'm an idiot? Like, did I do something wrong? What if people hate me?

DEANA:
There are definitely there are definitely moments where, where that pressure is, like, physically, it puts that lump in my throat.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah.

DEANA:
I can always hear my voice shaking. And so, you know, let’s take the breath and I realize that, that that's exactly the signal that I need to tell me, keep going. Because this is important.

ADRIANA:
Yes, yes. Yeah, absolutely. And you've touched upon like, two interesting things that, have actually come up in previous conversations on this podcast. One, I had a guest talk about, like reframing nervousness that when you're nervous before giving a talk, it's a sign that you care, that you care enough about what you're what you're doing. And I think that's such a lovely way to reframe it and put it into a different perspective to almost like, calm me down to, I guess it has a soothing effect. And then the other one, is the idea that, you know, As someone who is in a minority group, it's so important, for others who look like us, to see us so it's almost like extra important for us to get past our, our fears and, and, and do this not just for us, but to inspire others. And, the cool story around that one is that the guest who was telling me that I had another guest on, who was inspired by that same woman, who, you know, who said, like, I'm doing this to inspire others. And she was one of the people who was directly impacted by that person. And as she's telling me this, it just sent shivers down my spine. I was like, getting all emotional because I'm like, this stuff matters. We're seeing direct impact of this.

DEANA:
Every time.

DEANA:
And a by the way, some of your guests are like, just phenomenal. And, were you on something with Charity Majors?

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Yeah.

DEANA:
And Kelsey Hightower.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah, I've had Kelsey Hightower on. I've had Charity Majors on. I've done a couple of panels with Charity as well.

DEANA:
When people who... like, thinking of people who, who, whose content randomly came in my feed as I was trying to, you know, get up to speed on this whole new cloud thing. You know, those are some voices. Oh, Liz-Fong Jones. So, just listening to those, people talk about not just what they know, and not in a way that that people can't connect to and access, like the the understanding underneath it, but also saying who they are and that, you know, they didn't get here how you think they did. Our different ways to get in the room. And different strengths that a team needs to really be to really achieve that, that really high goal and different, you know, talents and perspectives and all those things. And Adriana, that's what you inspire me, by the way.

ADRIANA:
Oh, thank you!

DEANA:
Everything. Like sharing the mic sharing the platform is, I think there are folks on your, in your, episode list that I otherwise would never have thought of following or we would have never heard of because they're just like, they're not in my ecosystem. And so it just like, wow, what a great exposure. And like to also say there's not just one way for folks to grow in tech and in, in life and in, in their profession. So there's not one way to succeed and there's not one way to have an impact. Like, not all of us are... not all of us are head of, head of, technology or the, you know, distinguished engineer. But we're all human.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

DEANA:
We all put in the hours and the sweat and we all care that hard.

ADRIANA:
Yes, yes, that that, you know, sums it up so nicely and, you know, like, when I was younger, I used to like, chase titles. And I used to compare myself against people, you know, like a for a while there, my, my husband and I used to work at the same company, and then I left, and he's still there. And people that we knew mutually, he'd be like, oh, listen, this person got promoted to manager. And I remember getting so steamed about it and like, just genuinely pissed. And he's like, I'm not going to tell you anymore because you get pissed off every time. Because I was so jealous. I'm like, why am I not being promoted to manager? And then I came to this realization in my career, when I finally did become a manager, where I'm like, I don't like it. And there are other ways to, like, be a leader. Yeah, without being a manager. I realized, like, for me personally, I love digging into the weeds of tech. And managing people just isn't fun for me. So, like, once I let go of that and just enjoyed, like, gave myself permission to enjoy what I enjoy and and just, like, things took off for me, you know what I mean?

DEANA:
So for me, like all of the things that I liked about being management, being in management in my previous, previous life, it turns out I would have done if they paid me for it or not, and so I could actually keep doing it. I like the mentoring. So, I reach, when I find a group that is looking for mentors and I volunteer. I loved doing that with, a group that's no longer around, Portland women in Tech. And oh man, I miss that community. But. There are other, there are plenty of other communities that are still looking for mentors. I have mentees now that, you know, currently, are currently in a, in an engagement and, and I liked the strategic thinking, the systems thinking. I like thinking of systems of systems. And it turns out I'm going to do that anyway, whether I'm an individual contributor or a manager. And it turns out that I can actually help my leadership in ways that they didn't realize. And I can remind them that, hey, it's not just me, someone who's had a couple of decades in infrastructure that you should listen to. You should also be listening to some of your your junior engineers or your your mid-level engineers who are pretty quiet. They might actually know a little bit about why your systems are working the way they are. And help you make better strategic decisions, or have a better strategic, visibility on what your what you're actually actual risks and, and opportunities might be and you know, again and again it goes back to being able to turn it off and turn on with the invisibility. It's, that's that's one of those areas where a thing about being invisible is you can recognize other folks who are using it as a, as a shield and, who have a lot of, of super power, you know, lurking underneath. And you can help them. And I think that's one of my favorite things about being a mentor is most of my mentees.

DEANA:
I've learned so much more from them than they they I think they could have learned from me because all I do is just is I help them find their own strengths and all I can do is, is, show them that. That, yes, you still have a lot more experience you need to gain. Yes, you're going to get a lot of feedback

DEANA:
that kind of hurts a little bit, hurts your ego a little bit because, you didn't come out perfect. But take those things as as growth. That's why they call them growing pains. And, and it's, it's a great way to be able to, connect those, those, management activities, or the things that I liked about it, into my daily work and, and like, keep recharging me for the, for the spreadsheets. And JSON files, that I, that I have to just deal with and, and that I actually enjoy, you know, for myself. But you know, the thing about management is you've got to be, if you're going to be a manager, you've got to be really understanding of what your organization's strategic direction is, what its vision is, what its values truly are, and decide are you aligned enough to be able to represent that as a manager?
Are you aligned enough to be able to, make the company's priorities your own? In terms of how you speak? And, as an individual contributor, it's so much more liberating.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

DEANA:
You know, I can I can even mentor up, which I think is is just part of part of being an expert in your field is, you can show folks who are, you know, miles above your pay grade how to, how to do a new thing and, how to create some value.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. And I think you make such an, an important point when it comes to mentoring, that I think, if you're not learning anything from your mentees, then I think you're doing it wrong. Because honestly, like, coming with this attitude of like, I am the authority on all the things and you shall listen to me like...

DEANA:
Also the same thing you did, though, too, about the unfairness of how management, how promotions were handed out. And by the way, I also, it was completely obfuscated to me early in my career that there was another way to get promoted without going into management.

ADRIANA:
Yes, exactly. Me too.

DEANA:
Right. And not just promoted but, compensated.

ADRIANA:
Exactly.

DEANA:
Enrich. Like we grow in different ways. Like I, I didn't talk like this. I wouldn't have been able to talk like this had I stayed in management because I could have only spoken what I was allowed to speak. Whereas now I the views and opinions that I express are my own.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's a different vibe. I, I remember my, at my last management position, my, my boss was trying to groom me for director position and he said something which, which you touched upon, which is you're going to have to put your personal goals aside and, and really focus on the company goals and, like, I'm not ready for that. It's not to say, like, you know, when you're working, of course, you like, you’re being... your paycheck comes from somewhere. It doesn't mean like, screw the company goals. I don't care. That's not it at all. But I think a different level, of like, really putting the company needs above your own professional needs. And when you're in these higher positions. And for me, I think it takes a bigger mental load as well. Like, it's big mental toll.

DEANA:
Oh, ego, too.

ADRIANA:
Okay. Yeah.

DEANA:
I think the thing that, that newer software engineers and and technologists, of all kinds. Really just anyone who kind of comes in from their, their college degree into their tech role, has in common is they're used to excelling. Probably. They’re at the top of their class up until K through 12 or I, I don't know how it is in Canada.

ADRIANA:
But yeah same same same.

DEANA:
Yeah. So so then like you, you're, you're a freshman in college and that's probably the first time in a long time that you're oh among all-stars. Oh no. It's going to be harder to stand out as the top 10% of the class, top 3% of the class. Because now these are the smartest people I've ever had in, all in one place. And so then maybe you get a little more humility and you've got a few years to build that back up. And if you're an extrovert, even easier, or if, if you're not, then you, you sort of lag further and further behind. I never thought I'd be in tech when I, I started out electrical engineering and I, for lack of better words, washed out. I it didn't didn't fit, at the time, at the time. But I, I took a different fork where I thought, okay, well, here's where I can start kind of building some value and it's fine, but everything that every next role just kept bringing me back and bringing that, that confidence back. But it brought me back to that feeling of, oh, yeah, this is what it's like to be around smart people again. And that okay. So I shouldn't say that with, with too much humor because and that was actually my attitude. I really enjoyed judging people for not being as smart as me, when really we're all smart at something. And when you're told you need to be smart about this in this way, and that's the only way to do it. You believe them when they tell you you're not smart.

So for anyone who thinks, I could never write code, I could never, administer that cluster. I could never do FinOps. Try it. You might actually have a strength that you haven't. You know, that you haven't actually discovered in yourself. And that's when, you know, that's when you can unlock it. And that's when you can say, okay, it's not about the smart people and the not smart people. It is really about people showing up with the strengths that they have got and the willingness to grow and have each other's backs. And that's how you build teams, that's how you make sustainable operations. That's how organizations become resilient. And, you know, we keep learning from each other. I learn so much from you, I really do.

ADRIANA:
Oh, thank you.

DEANA:
OTel stuff. Not in the observability space, but in the way that all data is in some way. You can use it as telemetry. To just tell you, like, is this the right signal? I am the bounds. I can't see my boundaries. This helps me understand what what the the bottom and the top looks like. And you know, whether or not I'm moving in the direction that I intended to. And so same thing with FinOps data, which is basically cloud cost data. It's just data analysis. It's just... it's a lot. It's coming at you fast. So you've got to be able to to sometimes listen to things at double speed. But you're not, like, it's it's not anything new. It's not more than, than, the thing that you're just willing to show up and care about, like, if that's the thing you care about, if observability is the thing you care about, if security is the thing you care about, you know, learn how to do it right, learn how other people do it differently from you.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's, you know, you've touched upon so many really cool and important points. I think first of all, I, as you said, like you coming, coming from like, high school and being the smartest person in your high school and then kind of coming back to reality when you're surrounded by all these other people in university who are like, oh, damn, that person's way smarter than me. It's it's such a humbling experience. I think it's an important experience. And I think for me, one of the biggest lessons was learning that, it's okay to not be the smartest person in the room. In fact, I never want to be, because I always want to keep learning. And then the other thing that I thought of, too is, you know, one of the struggles I had when I entered the workforce was, I was a great student, but I was such a shitty employee because I didn't know... it's a different skill set to be an employee versus a student. Right? Like, as an employee, there are expectations of being you know, more of a self-starter. And as a student, especially the unfortunately, I don't think that the education system is really geared towards independent thinking. And so it becomes a shock when you enter the workforce because it's like, tell me what I need to do, or, you know, like, I, I don't know, I just everything was a different vibe.

And I sucked at it. And once I, once I learned how to navigate the workforce, and I wish, I wish there were more opportunities for people to navigate the workforce before they graduate from high school or university or whatever. Then it became a lot better, but it was jarring for me. I sucked at it.

DEANA:
Yeah, I think that's where, and it's, again, easier, I think, for extroverts to find other folks to give you that feedback of, like, is this normal? Like, is it okay that it that I had to build my own dev environment and my own sandbox and without any like, parameters or got guardrail like, is that okay, let's or should I, you know, say something and try to make it better for the next one who comes in. You know, there's going to be someone... I'm going to get experience. I'm going to learn how to use these tools quickly and, and tear them down, rebuild them, you know, with with just the muscle memory in my in my finger knuckles and but oh, maybe I should document this somewhere and or correct the existing document and say, actually, the next person who does this is going to have to at least know to ask these questions before they say, oh, that's the that's the one. That's the compressed file that well, that's going to work for me.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. No. Yeah, I, I feel ya. I do want to pivot to one more topic. Before we wrap up, because we are coming up on time. But you've mentioned, FinOps a couple of times, and for those, in our audience who aren't familiar with shin ops, can you give like, a brief overview and also how you got into it?

DEANA:
Oh. So, I think I got into it. Well, I’ll explain what it is first, and, and, it is commonly described, as financial operations, and that's actually not completely accurate. FinOps, if it's used by a person in finance and accounting, is exactly that, financial operations. Maybe it's reporting, maybe it's journal entries, maybe it's something in the finance processes. It's not actually what Cloud FinOps It's it's more of a, a portmanteau of the terms finance, financial management, and DevOps. So taking sort of the cultural principles of, of that collaboration and that mutual accountability, from, from more technical spaces into this, business management of technology space. That's what FinOps is. And some companies use it to just control their, their cloud spend. Just make sure that no one's spinning up gigantic clusters of very expensive instance types. And some people use it as a telemetry to say, this is, this is a really efficient, stack. And I need to scale that. And, you know, I need to invest in this area because it's actually it's actually creating, a return, creating value for, you know, my, my team or my, my organization. So, so it's, and like I said, it's it's a lot like observability in that, you know, we're building intelligence with data, and we're, we're getting data that we've had, but organizing it and making it accessible, and it's really just telling us what we do, what the impacts of our engineering decisions are, and how that, you know, how that costs more money.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

DEANA:
Or how like, or how our, maybe our, our, SAS contracts are like are, are performing.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. And you know, it's, it's something so important to take into account because I think. You know, once a lot of organizations move to the cloud, especially if you're not, you know, if, if you are just a, a consumer of the service and not the one paying for the bill, it's easy to just, like, magically provision resources and just, you know, like the Cloud Fairy brought me this Kubernetes cluster. But there's a, until, like, you are staring at a massive, like, AWS or GKE bill, you're like, oh, shit. Like, I've gotten dinged even, like, on my personal, GKE account where, I had a an instance where I had a Kubernetes cluster that had, like, logging and monitoring enabled because that's enabled by default. Well, guess what? That ate up some massive, massive cloud costs. And and so now you're like, where do I where is the switch to turn this stuff off so that it doesn't, you know, so, so that it doesn't eat up my costs.

DEANA:
So that's where you if you bring in your, your FP&A, or your finance partner, in, or your, your, assistant comptroller in and say, say, well, what happened? What went wrong? I don't know, there was a $50,000 spike. And you know, that that would have bought me my next car. But, you know, fix it. With someone in FinOps who has, sort of access to, engineering terms and understanding of who your cloud vendors are to be able to say, okay, here's what happened on this workload, because of these events and because of these retention policies and because of these autoscaling thresholds, you left something running. You left the lights on, you left the bathtub flowing.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah.

DEANA:
Twenty simple things that can be proactive and that we can actually govern through automation. We can say, by the way, this open faucet has a time to live. This sandbox account is really important. We need to be able to allow a $50,000 spike, maybe, for about five minutes.

ADRIANA:
Right.

DEANA:
You know, to make sure that those guardrails are in place. If your organization doesn't have someone to go through and say, okay, I'm, I'm going to invest in, in this technology. And these consultants say that it's going to give me this much ROI. I need someone inside who's going to actually keep an eye on it. How are you observing it? What monitoring are you putting in place? What signals can you look for? Right. That's not rocket science. It's just, it's just, it can be a lot. And I promise you, there are a lot of quiet people who are quietly doing other work who would actually really excel in something like FinOps. And also a lot of automation that can be put in place where I think engineers who do the IAC, like, get really excited about writing those, policies and putting those, those different guardrails right into the pipeline to say, yeah, the CI/CD to say, okay, I'm not going to let, you know, the manager speaking. I'm not going to let that happen. Well, here's actually how the code will prevent that from ever happening. And... when you have like a, an understanding of what the exception process is, then, like, everybody can, can, gain that intelligence from having the experience and having all that context. It's a tough thing though, because, you know, you you don't always know why policies exist.

ADRIANA:
And yeah.

DEANA:
If I know engineers, they want to just know how to get around them.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. And you touched upon a really important point because I think, it's this lack of understanding of why the policies exist, pisses engineering... engineers off. And as you said, try to, it causes them to try to get around it. And I think understanding where these policies come from, makes a huge difference. And I think working with engineers to craft the policies, I think goes a long way as well, because then it's like, okay, I had a hand in this, I, and I think it brings that extra level of empathy too, right?

DEANA:
Oh yeah. Yeah. And collaboration really is what keeps people happy in their jobs, I think. That's when you realize, oh you know, I did a thing and, and I want to, I want to work with that person again. Like I think that's the thing that makes, makes some of our work less boring. You know just just less isolated.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. This has been really great. Before we wrap up, do you have any final, parting words of wisdom?

DEANA:
I think I just want to acknowledge that it's been a tough time, that we need a lot of compassion to keep, showing up for people we've never. We've probably never worked with before. Never. Interacted with to just know that that, if you were living in a place where there are floods, or if you're, if you're in an industry or, or. Well, it's a tough time to be in tech, where you have a little less job security than you did, and than you thought you would this year. You know, just having that compassion is something that, it's going to be helpful to just remind ourselves who, to know that. The person who is probably giving you the most friction might have just had the worst day after a lot of bad days. And, and maybe be curious about that.

ADRIANA:
Yeah.

DEANA:
That you can keep showing up for them and, and keep seeing how maybe you're the person who can, can turn it around for them. And, or maybe that person's experience is something that can turn it around for you. I, I feel like I keep getting reminders of that. Really, every day. And, I didn't know I was going to say that, but that's the kind of week it's been.

ADRIANA:
I feel ya. And, you know, thank you so much for calling that out, because I think it's it's really important to put stuff into perspective. Tech times are definitely strange these days. And having that little bit of extra empathy goes a long way. So thank you so much. And thank you so much, Deana, for geeking out with me today.

ADRIANA:
Y'all, don't forget to subscribe and be sure to check the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media. Until next time...

DEANA:
Peace out and geek out!

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.