Replay-Breaking the Glass Ceiling – Dashaun Carter VMware Explore EU 2022

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If you have watched Any of the VMware keynotes from the past two things? Too fast to VMware Explorers. You will realize why I'm jazzed To have this conversation at VMware Explorer 2022 Barcelona 8,000 folks this is the largest VMware conference in Europe so far The conversations have been deep customers asking detailed questions Realizing you know what? We don't have the answers. Let's talk to the experts. I have one of those experts today on the CTO visor studio Deshawn Carter Spring developer relations at VMware.

Welcome to the program Keith. I I am Like I've seen the show. I watch the show this it is. This is something that I I'm just happy to be here I was gonna fight kick So I'm glad like this. Yeah, I check in the box I know we worked it out, but originally Kelsey was in this lot you you you I love you I'm like, whoa, I haven't seen that kind of activity since I play basketball. Yeah, not a boxed-out.

I had body position That's that's what I got. I have him. I got a couple inches on him a couple pounds on him So wow, I think we all have a couple of pounds on Kelsey's, you know, he looks on camera. He looks big Yeah, but he's he's wiry. Yeah, he's wiry. Yeah, that's the way to say it. So You've been around industry a bit and you're a developer Advocate for VMware developer relations and it's it's I don't know if everyone notices this but it's something that I Notice instantly whenever I see Amanda Blevins on the stage or I see a Deshaun Carter Kelsey Hightower I Can't help but be proud in one instance, but in another instance wonder how did someone from a underrepresented?

Category in tech, you know, you look at the diversity numbers. It doesn't matter if it's VMware Microsoft Google Really really doesn't matter. We're well Kelsey made it the distinguished engineer at Google and we'll have a mom We'll talk about that journey, but I can't help but wonder How did he or she get up there? I like that. That's just the the glass ceiling is a real thing Yeah, I think my journey is non-traditional I Didn't realize that this is the path I want to be on early my first interactions with those developer advocates or even the best sales engineers They kind of played that same Let me get you interested.

Let me get you excited. Let me help you If I had known Early my career that that was an option. I might have taken it. I'm glad I didn't look at it as an option I'm glad that I stayed in and got the engineering and and the the scar tissue and Learn along the way because I think that it makes me better at at this role now that I'm in it I still don't know what I'm doing But I'm passionate about what I do and I Realized that not everybody Goes to work and they're passionate about it.

Not everybody goes and like oh, there's that new vsan I got to get my hands on that like not everybody has that passion and that's okay that Eight to five like it can be work. A lot of people go to work just to go to work I haven't any passionate about what I do. And I think that passion is kind of pulled me in this direction over my career So let's talk about those scars Because I think it's important To realize that no matter where you're at in your career you have scars and that scar those scars have value whenever I I mentor someone that's Later in their career.

They're always like let me put my past experience behind me and Just start afresh How is that short-sighted That that's a that's a tough thing. That's part of what that experience is Just because you worked, you know X number of years. Did you really have X? Amount of experience right? It's those experiences that make the years valuable. So You know person a they might have done all the things they might have wore all the hats and taken all the things to production And they had the experience Whereas person B.

Yeah, they worked in the same company for the same amount of years, but the experience is different and it's those things It's your experiences your authentic experiences that tell your story and that's going to help Yeah guide you and you get to lean on that experience. You do get to lean on that experience I think you let's dip delve a little bit into kind of an example from your your experience in spring spring has been around for a while now and One of the things that people I Think fail to realize is that when you're when you're adopting the technology like spring Kubernetes, whatever you have to go through Something that I call a bad word in the enterprise application Rationalization.

Yes. Yep, and when I say application rationalizations to a CIO of a certain age I Might get kicked out though. I might get kicked out the room Young people would say oh What? Application that that makes perfect sense. Why wouldn't I want to rationalize my apps? Yeah from your experience when you have to help companies transform what was like some of those were roadblocks Man that that's a good question. So spring, you know, I have I have this mixed bag history of spring Where when it's first introduced?

No, I'm gonna I'm gonna be j2e stack I'm gonna do this the natural way the pure way and then realize later that oh wait, I'm I'm doing a whole lot of extra work realizing that the approved path for j2e was 12 different roles of people. Well, I'm if I'm in a 12 person a startup If I'm in a 12 person a startup, they can't be taking these in production spring simplified that path and Now I kind of like went away came back Spring boot is what I kind of fell in love with this idea that I could Deliver my app all the things to production without having to worry about the other side Well have to worry about the VM and where it's landing here.

I got my app distribute architecture microservice. It was great But now we're still kind of tackling some of these same things you brought up the app rationalization One of the things that I encourage teams that are trying to move forward is come up with that hypothesis It's one of those building blocks. I think that you need like hey, I want to take this app to production I'm gonna need kubernetes to do it Why here's my hypothesis. I think that if we do this and we use kubernetes to do it this way I think that I think that I'm expecting here's my theory And if it doesn't work kind of put those guardrails around it the startup way like hey Give me six weeks to go down this path.

And if it doesn't work, okay, that's cool But if it works, let me take it to production. Let me keep going so that experience Repeatedly has Informed you that you have this wealth of knowledge. We're both of similar ages. I have a couple of years on you still so I think it's close. I'm not gonna say it on the air. You're not gonna say I'm just gonna say I'm gonna flex I got a 14 year old grandbaby. So, you know Unless you can beat that.

Uh, no, no. No, I'm trying to do the math. Nah. No But those informed Experiences have led you To your journey where you're on the stage at VMware Explorer Giving your famous. I'm jazzed, you know You came on stage today and you said I'm jazzed and people instantly knew like they connected like it was like my $6,000 carpet at the last VMware Explorer. It was people were like, that's that's the Sean Carter right there. I know that guy. I Think people discount back to my One of my first questions people discount the value of that experience to get to the point where they can be on stage At what point did you recognize that you needed to share and how did you share that knowledge to get you to that dev wet rev dev advocate position I Am passionate about what I do.

I'm passionate about development. I'm passionate about getting these in production again That scar tissue the the pain how long does it take? I tell the story about CEO comes in. Hey, there's a typo We fix it I fix it right in front of them. Yeah. Hey, we're good But it takes weeks the CEO's coming. Hey, I thought we fixed that typo That that story that type of story is like look if it's just a typo. We should have this easy path of production That kind of helped.

I like hey, we can make it better this way and try to build a community build some Consensus around hey, here's so I was always kind of out trying to Share what I'm learning Get feedback on it and take it forward That worked and it worked as an engineer It worked to help me build a community with other engineers within the company. And then at some point I Don't know really what what the change was At some point I realized I'll tell you what it was.

I got into management and I was like that's not what I want to do And yeah, I shifted back I had a relationship With a company and that sales engineer that extended team They made an impact on me and I wanted to do with it. I wanted to give that light bulb moment I wanted to give that feeling to others that I knew I had I knew I had somebody Like this I had somebody that wasn't showing up to my meetings But that I could always go to for answers and they felt like a part of my extended team I put you in that bucket.

So What about external to your Organization because you're you're in the external facing role The majority of people that you speak to now are not VMware folks. There are people that work for GE Boeing Just companies at large these major brands. I took I took the sales approach first But I think that my approach was really modeled after what I was seeing from the community from people like Kelsey from people like Brian Lyles and Mario Gray and Josh long I I saw this I was kind of trying to deliver what I got To my customers in and that was kind of the route that took me here.

There was a point in 2020 where it was it was a tough year where I realized that There still wasn't a lot of people that look like me and I wanted to be More visible to more people. Mm-hmm. That's why I switched roles and I learned more about kind of what what it means and I took it as a responsibility so before we Dive into kind of what happened after you'd switched roles. I think a lot of people key into that. Wait, what?

Wait on let's not gloss over he switched roles. Like I struggle with that whole That whole piece. I'm trying to just switch roles like it. Yeah, what is it that easy? Can you just can you just go to your manager or your and say hey, I want to switch roles I actually You build relationships as you're going Always, you know, there's always Yeah a perception somebody else's perception is always different. Every everybody that you meet has a different reception of you And I realized that at some point but I made this relationship with a team that was outside of the company But because of that relationship, there's always kind of checkpoints.

We had a regular conversation and Yeah, things just worked out the stress of 2020 this this welcoming door and Opportunity plus I'll be honest things were great at home. Like I was like, there's a lot of stress a lot of stress Bunch of different places on the back of my neck right now as you're as you're recounting and and that's what It was still in the kind of sales, but I thought it's gonna be a bigger platform a bigger opportunity I loved it. Like I've been lucky to have roles that I didn't get excited about.

Yeah, I'm hearing some key Themes here. We didn't we don't notice this whole time You know you you have something around check before you have something like 5,000 6,000 Twitter followers You're on the stage of VMware Explorer at no point that I hear you say, you know what? I was out here publishing Blog posts and doing tweets or doing this you were out here Rolling up your sleeves and doing the hard work of building relationships Yeah, and I think that's one of the things that younger engineers younger Professionals realize a little bit too late that they need we talked about the the need to have a safe zone That within your organization or within your extended community you need to have a safe zone someone you can talk to and just vent and say man this this George Floyd thing is just It has me Struggling.

I don't care which side of the racial equation you're on you can say, you know what? I don't have any african-american friends to even go to invent. That was one of my overwhelming things People came to me because I'm out Yeah out front. They were like you're the only person I know that can DM and ask about this stuff Yeah, like there's Twitter is a hot place. It got hot. It was it was uncomfortable for a while VMware, you know, I did two stints.

I was at pivotal got acquired by VMware I left I went to Redis which was amazing and then I came back again trying to make things better at home was the bottom line But I've been lucky to have these roles, but it was really really hard to leave VMware When it was the first company that I felt like I had a safe place Yeah, Brian Lyles through many many years of seeing him online and then actually being in the same org and knowing that he was there he kind of Provided a safe place.

That wasn't just a slack channel. It was I felt comfortable I felt like I had somebody giving me guidance. I never had somebody as a mentor to say hey, here's what you need to look for And I felt like I got a lot of it from him. I got a lot of confidence I got a lot of insight and he was just Open and sharing and it was really really hard to leave that back in whatever. Yeah 2020 But now I'm back And and I take the responsibility of Trying to be visible for people that might be underrepresented I take it serious and it's a core to what I'm doing and I want it to be a core for what I'm doing going forward Well the shine you can see why I'm still jazzed That you came on the program.

It has been a wonderful conversation Whether you're in a underrepresented group or you're Struggling to get into IT or some other field We've learned some really key aspects one you need community the CTO advisor one of the big reasons why we do this is to promote community have Underrepresented voices to have people who been there and can share their journey If you have questions My DMS are open Kelsey Hightower DMS are open. You can ask these questions We'll get back to you as soon as we can at CTO advisor on Twitter Stay tuned for more coverage VMware Explorer 2022 notice we didn't talk about any VMware products because we're talking about how to help you the Architect the CTO better do your job Live from Barcelona, I'm Keith Townsend