Current State of Technology
Transcript
[Music] hi welcome to the special edition of the CTL advisor I'm foolish man you may know me as exchange goddess I'm here today with an all-star lineup we've got Leah Teresa and Jody you ladies ones introduce yourselves sure I'm Leah show I work for rubric as a master technologists and tme and I've been in the industry for over 20 years I'm Teresa Miller and I'm the founder of 24 by 7 IT connection I also have put some time into the industry over 20 years and I'm
a Microsoft MVP Citrix CTP and VMware the expert hi I'm Jerry Sealy I am a principal Tim in the office of the CTO global field I've also been in the industry for a little over 20 years and also the expert and you may know me I was right always ok ladies let's relax now let's just have a real conversation well here all look like we're like all stressed out ok so we're all here to talk about the state of IT and that's a really big loaded
question well that's why we're low cost our stuff yeah so let's get started where do you think IT is headed I mean from roles to just I mean everything culture let's just let's just throw it out there Lea or Jodi whoever wants to go first one thing that I noticed with our industry in general is that it's cyclic so we have everybody rushing everything to the cloud but what a lot of financial folks are finding is that those bills are very big so now they're like
pulling back on pram and then there's this balance between what we put in the cloud what we put on Prem and so there's kind of this tug-of-war going on so even though we see more folks putting things in the cloud I think over time I think we're gonna see certain things come back on Prem and stay on Prem because they're trying to learn what that balances and where their dollars go do you think it's more of lessons learned where maybe some folks jump too quick in
the pool yeah where they you know dope headfirst without dipping yeah because the you know they get their first eight at AWS bill or Google bill or from whoever else and you know it's the size of the phone book and they don't know how to read it just like an eighty you know bill that that you used to get when you used to get your mobile bills and they every little itty-bitty phone call or second that you took you know it was like this stack and
then they realized that wait a minute I got it I got to think about this little more and I got to dial this back so there's a lot of lessons learned I also think there's a fundamental shift and the way that people DevOps is moving to the cloud and then there's so many disparate sections and the companies where they're silos and some people developers have the ability to just dump whatever they want up there and they go run off and then pretty soon companies start coming
back and they don't know they have three four different clouds that they're working in all of a sudden just because yeah running right out dumping it in there and not sure how much it's gonna cost and what it's doing to the company and then you start getting into all the different you know infrastructure chefs I think so you're yeah right that's gonna be a big problem for companies for sure the multi-cloud things yeah because that's word do we want to start I know but it's so
true now back to Leah's point though about companies coming back on Prem I think some are not gonna do that I think some are capable of it but the cost tied to coming back on Prem is a whole nother conversation once your data is there it's very expensive and when you consider like these cloud companies the large ones they'll send trucks to your location to get your data to be able to put it in their cloud right that's expensive - they're not gonna probably I mean
maybe they would but bringing that truck back and the cost tied to it is is extreme so I think long-term I think people are gonna potentially feel stuck in the cloud if they made the decision to go there but it but that being said it's not a bad thing either there are many things that are great and alone office 365 exchange online being hey being one of them exchange gothis even though I'm exchange guys I still love office 365 I think you know it's a great
solution so do you think coming back on premises it's just kind of a fairy tale or just exaggerated stories I see even just this week talking to customers a lot of people are taking their DevOps out there and then bringing them back in to bring because they won't put production right out there so they'll build in the cloud and then bring it back on Prem and then they'll production up so I think there's a little bit of both but I'm seeing more of it coming back
in to go to production first on Prem and then deciding whether they're gonna take it off Prem so you think it's more just careful planning yeah because one thing that I found especially with Emma CMS piece is cost cost is huge and that seems to be you know a bigger factor than the actual technology itself so we're gonna see that war there between the evolution of technology evolving technology versus the cost of doing it there's always going to be that war because the CIO doesn't spend
any money who does yeah for free I mean you know your admin your your technical directors they're all going to want to spend money they want the technology they want to make things better you know they want to bring better services but the CIO doesn't want to spend any money at all right he's he's trying to find out where do I save and cut back right well they're trying to figure out how do I spend money and expand wait so you see that that war going
on between the two so agile I'm just gonna throw that word out there right a July T mm-hmm how is that playing to this whole going to the cloud coming back on premises that almost a DevOps architecture design right I think that gets as a starting to figure out architecture in you know obviously being a VMware person validated designs and waterfalling and the other DevOps words that were you know buzzwords that we're throwing out there but I think it's a huge it's it spelling a bigger
bigger part now but there's so many different facets to what we're doing and delivering an architectural level I think it goes back to how so the money is one piece but it's about how you want your employees to spend their time to so when you talk about agile and you know infrastructure they're not maintaining that anymore and I think in some ways that changes the roles and responsibilities of us in enterprises and and it's it's an interesting shift yeah I think some people were afraid of
that alone when the cloud first came I remember some some like marketing that went out like oh and now they're not going to have any work to do so they're gonna be having cake and parties all the time and that that's not true either I think there's anything new yeah I mean I can definitely see it just from my experience working as an administrator you do shift even though you still have your job yeah you your traditional roles or your traditional duties may have shifted to
something else more security related the more networking related it just it's it's a shift and you know I have these conversations a lot with people especially at conferences how is the cloud impacting your job yeah and are you fearful of losing it mm-hmm and I've heard some people say yeah well I mean what what are you what are you guys see and a Theresa you still work for a customer yeah and both of you work for vendors I work for a vendor now so it's yeah
I've crossed there was a dark side the work wasn't go away right it does know we're here is always there one thing that I do see is a big evolution around the type of software and services that are offered which allows these folks to be able to evolve and the previous company that I worked for turbo nomic it actually allowed them to be able to evolve into different types of roles but at first when the product was brought in there was a lot of fear the
they were gonna lose their jobs so once they see that these the this new software and this new way of doing things with software as a service as other types of software to help optimize infrastructure that this just helps them move to new skills and makes their life a little easier it gives them a little more work-life balance you know like for example with the company I work for you could be out on the beach somewhere and you know someone is terrified and needs their data
back and you just press a button on an app and it's done and you don't get disturbed you don't have to run back to the hotel room freaked out but ya don't you know makes their life you know what really cracks me up is we all work in a team I t's all about change but the people that are most fearful of change are the people that I do keynote least it's so funny maybe we fear change yeah you really do we do but we love
change I think is gonna say I really actually do love change as well and when you talk about moving we're close to the cloud I'd say 80% of what I do today is in the cloud and I'm learning something new all the time because there's so many integrations with on-prem that are still required for a business whether it's your DNS or your servers it all you know it's all has to be available to your users your network your your domain yeah so your job won't go
away be willing to learn and be willing to spread your wings a little bit further but there's still plenty of work to do in the cloud yeah I agree so once you when we all agree that there's always gonna be issues to solve oh yeah that's called job scared yeah from becoming like and that's maybe that's to the other segue into that the state of ICT is changing is that people are now becoming developers that weren't developers because they're coding for automation or they're learning how
to do cloud work because they've you know we're never a regular admin it's just all of those new problems a new set of problems it's not likely all your problems go away your problems to right with the Rings are gonna change and a lot of times you don't realize what its gonna shift to so then that creates a lot of work and surprise yeah job security yeah it is yeah so you actually hit the point do you think everybody should become a developer I would say
know it but do this should they have a developer skills would be willing to learn about how development may play a role in their daily job or you know the company that they work with yeah I mean you have to be invested in the change and I think that's an important you know key to take away and I also think it's also the opposite I think developers ought to spend six months to 12 months in infrastructure channel services because I will tell you once you've done
that you will code completely different yeah I went back down development today I would go completely different than I did yeah just because of what you know right right yeah but learning the different job and knowing what they need it or yeah yeah the developers caused a lot of pain in their show though infrastructure you know admins we do the same thing unless we've sat in that situation and we understand what it's like to be sitting on the opposite end shall we think a little bit
differently when we are deploying our servers and applications so let's let's kind of move on to a different topic or I guess similar to diversity that's always a thing that's always that yeah interesting topic to talk about specially now we're already good this whole diversity and tech I'm I'm gonna be upfront I'm always very gun-shy when someone asks me to join a panel about all women and we're going to speak about technology oh girl we're gonna speak up being a woman in tech run away yeah
yeah I'm like why should we talk about women working at can't we just talk about tech yeah and see there's there's a there's a one thing that I notice is that there's a big difference so there's women in tech which covers you know marketing business other areas and we have plenty of women in those areas we do need more women in in sales I do have to say the frontline of the sales you know there's not enough women there but I notice a lot of the
women in tech is covered by those areas a lot only because they're outgoing it's it's something that's easy for them to talk about in their jobs what we're we're lacking that I don't see enough of is the Women Engineers the boots on the ground the women they're actually pulling the cables coding you know the folks you don't see we don't have enough of them and you know to be able to spend the time to grow new women engineers is very different than women in technology because
you find women in marketing you know they could go work for frito-lay they could you know I've had friends in marketing and they change industries all the time because their career is in marketing the art of marketing which is very difficult right so they can do that but as engineers this is this is our bread and butter this is who we are and it's very different I would say from my perspective I heard some really ingenuine today I'm talking to Betsy said her and to me
I also agree it's not about just talking about women in tech but it's about just having a level playing field everybody you know doing the same job and just getting the same pay and to me if you're a woman in tech our guy in tech I think that we all have battles at different levels yes and that it's not just about us it's about us helping each other all you know be diversified so that's a eventually the extra sticking point yeah and it you know it
really makes it seem like if we had that level playing field things would feel a lot different right you know I for a little while actually taught at a university and one of my students came in and she said oh I tried doing tech and it was so frustrating not because of the work because she didn't have that level playing field were in the office she didn't feel she was offered the same no no and so she left you know and I think that's a common
a very common story and I think it fosters you know from the top down right I think if there's executive support and no matter what company it is that supports any person trying to move up whether it's a woman or not but they have to teach management make sure management's on board you know I think it's a like you said back to that culture change and also on the women us as women we have to seek those champions absolutely we can mentorship from it each other
will just just run away we have to find those mentors because I know throughout my career I've found those mentors and most of those mentors were people that you would never imagine that would help me out and so you know just because you know it's a white male or it's you know something else that you're uncomfortable with do not judge a book by its cover that person can help you write it you know so your diversity has to come out right and say anybody can help
me I just need to find that way yes look for the skills that you don't have and find the person with those skills and you know that I think that's what helps you and those are you an advocate that's true you're what I was that what I have learned yeah is you have to be your own advocate yes they're willing to speak up yes for sure yeah and actually own it yeah I mean make sure that you have the qualifications make sure yeah but chops to
do it because if you don't you know you're just like anybody else you're not gonna marry right people talk a lot about making sure there's you know having women with certain skills women won't apply for certain jobs if they don't have 50% of the skills they just won't even go for as for a male they will but I think that's only because they don't get theirselves enough chance to say you know 75% I can do 25% I can learn and I can learn it and you
know thirty days or whatever the day I'll offer everything and yes my career has been so darn great we think that's a confidence issue yeah I think so it is I think it is no I well I think it's we're very detail-oriented we were talking about that this morning and I think if we look at a list we think we need to meet all the criteria I was actually working with my sister this week on job that she was going to be applying for and I
sent it over I said you know I've because I ran into it I said are you interested and she didn't quite meet all the qualifications and I said don't don't look at that are you interested that's what she's like you know what yes I am so I'm glad you know so she's gonna go for it yes absolutely and you have to yeah I have to what's the worst that can happen yeah yes I know and it's also the law numbers okay so if you're looking for
a job you have to apply for so many jobs a day and increase that every few days so you start out with five a day you go to ten a day you go to twenty a day you know and it's the law numbers to get that get that next job you don't have time to sit there and say okay I meet all yeah that sounds good I'm applying exactly and you would be surprised yeah what comes up with you stepping out of your comfort zone you
know taking a little bit of risk yeah yeah okay another topic soft skills that's that's an that is another one because traditionally you know IT folks were that image of the IT guys in the basement you know it's all the dog sitting in a corner that is kind of shifting or I definitely say it has shifted from my experience you you've got to be more than a you know have technical chops how do you guys feel about the whole soft soft skills I think it's I
think it's important for whatever you want to do so depending on what you want to do will depend on the type of soft skills you have and very much you need right because one thing that I found came coming along because I came out as a OS developer I came out on the on the development side out of college and one thing that I found is anybody who like actually had a personality they wanted to put you in front of customers they wanted to put you
in front of the public because of what you just described yeah I see that as the IT guy so did the developer who developed the product he's described that way or she's described that way as well so one thing that I'm finding is that if you want to do more activities that put you more out in the public then you do need the soft skills you do need to understand how to how to present and one thing I have I have an executive coach I've had
an executive coach for three years and I'll tell you the guy is worth it who's hearing in in Las Vegas and he is just absolutely worth it and it is made a difference in my career it really has so and I've gotten companies pay for it so most of the time I'm making it that's yeah that is fantastic you know I wonder if companies are investing in soft skills for their employees mm-hmm they talk about it but is there is there a lot of investment because
I think it is important to have that as you go into interacts with other people yeah yeah yeah because I see it mainly in the executives but not correct necessarily and folks like us know outside from our perspective we have this conversation with a great women's breakfast this morning and we talked exactly about soft skills this morning there's another topic and one of the things that we are focused I was doing pods so we have pods and to help each other come up with skills or
get better at soft skills or executive presentations or other things like that that you really need speaking in front of people because you can speak in front of any executive and then you have to go do a presentation in front of your own executives and that's huge you know you can wonder how to speak so you know that's thing that I know that we're working on at VMware from VMware perspective but I mean from other companies you just don't I don't I don't see it at
all unless somebody shows that they have some soft skills there's no extra training at least in like oh yeah and all of my experiences if you want soft skills you have to you know like you said get an executive coach put yourself through like a degree I did my master's degree and I also helped build soft skills by running a an academic student organization like to me it was more about pursuing it on my own nobody said go do this right or you needed to learn
XYZ correct writing skills but just getting along with your coworker oh yeah like writing emails understanding how the tone I was across is always you know there were certain things need to come through email rather than texting we don't it's because you know ten percent of our communication is is the actual words so all you have from a text or an email is worth ninety percent of the communication is not there so you have no idea what's going if you ever talk to that person you
have no idea how well you're receiving or how their message is actually being delivered to you so you're guessing yeah is this a tone is this a yeah that's so frustrating it is yeah cuz I were like oh my god yeah don't even know they're angry any pick up the phone you're like can you explain and you have this conference oh my god I was stressed out for you know it I wish customers or companies would invest more and those basic communications goes bait you know
that's just being a decent human being yeah it's very difficult well we used to learn that at home I mean right at home training yeah but it I don't know the generations behind us didn't exactly get that home training base on how it got missed I wasn't trying to do too much you know we're the key of multitasking right are we trying to do too much at work yeah probably I would think trying to push out too many projects and not enough planning not not enough
investment in the research we want to get done cuz we want to check that too I'm a heavy overachievers I would definitely agree with that I feel like I always did you know have to do more just because I do I tend to love the word know and I've reached my limit but keep just keep piling it on until I say no and then we're going yeah I think that's important I you know one of the things that I have deliberately done in the last couple
of few years is know knowing that limit but also I take a conscious effort not to multitask because I say is when it comes to work if I am writing an email I am not answering my phone I finished that email and you know I noticed that you do that did you I do because I can't do that I can't it was I keep talking to me it was a conscious effort and yeah if you don't set aside time for those deliberate pieces of work you're
working on I find that the quality of my work goes backwards so by single tasking the quality goes way up and then it avoids those conversations like the emails that we were talking about where someone didn't understand something because I took the time to make sure I worded it correctly yes so that I'm gonna end up on that phone call yeah 20 minutes later it's so we know and as women we you know we're built to multitask yes so you know you know we're the folks
that have the five kids running around and we know what each one of them is doing something cooking and fixing a server right yeah and you're just like oh my god yeah yeah but are we setting ourselves up for burnout cuz that's another yes this affects men and women yes yeah so let's talk about IT burnout or just burn out in general cuz we're multitasking we're doing we're trying to do too much I think as we know IT being fast-paced I think yeah highly a lot
of us go towards that we can do so many things and I liked your comment about taking the time to slow down and maybe a lot more of us should get that that skill but I think you're I I think we are kind of burnout attend I see a balls drop and we tend to reach our hands out and grab everything adjusted yeah because I vote for that I still I still get all my work done and then some just by still taking that time and
you mentioned the burnout that's where I was a few years ago and I made some different changes in my career to make sure I could regain my bearings and now I'm running again in a different way and that single tasking is huge for me yeah I've been I've done the same thing she's done yeah I've done it it's conscious you you have it's a conscious effort I will I will literally block out time and I'll I'll even put my phone or you know airplane mode I'll
do something just to stay focused for that that segment of time but it does make a big difference and I feel better yep and the quality of my work is going on too and it still gets done mm-hmm I'm not missing deadlines all the work is done that was a great conversation ladies thank you again for joining me Leah Theresa Jodi this has been wonderful and thank you everybody for joining us here on the special edition of a CTO advisor you can follow us on Twitter
as exchange goddess and Delia zoom and twenty four by seven IT connect Adam Wright always thanks again everybody have a great day
